‘I don’t think it’s innocuous’: Kansas Board of Regents’ process scrutinizes academic programs

Some officials have called Emporia State, reeling from layoffs and program upheaval, a test case for approach

The Kansas Board of Regents unveiled an academic review process in June for all the public universities in the state. Some worry this could lead to situations such as the Emporia State University firings, where tenured staff and long-standing programs were cut abruptly. (Mason Hart for Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA — The state Board of Regents unveiled a plan to identify and potentially chop academic programs they deem underperforming at all six of the state’s public universities, in what some warn could be a repeat of the contentious layoffs at Emporia State University.

Starting this summer, Regents staff will make a list of undergraduate academic programs that are more than five years old and fall short of two or more of the board’s chosen metrics for the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Wichita State University, Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University and Pittsburg State University.

Daniel Archer, vice president of student affairs with KBOR, said the focus on undergraduate programs was partly due to declining enrollment in a June 14 presentation.

“We’re diving into really a deep dive here into the undergraduate programs here,” Archer said. “Part of that’s because that’s where we lost youth. If you look at our enrollment declines, there’s been a greater impact on the undergraduate population.”

But Michael DeCesare, a senior program officer for American Association of University Professors, said “it would be a travesty” for the process used at Emporia State “to spread across the entire system.”

Program performance standards will include having 25 or more students enrolled in the program, producing more than 10 graduates from the program, having 51 percent or more of graduates working in the region after graduation and student return on investment. That return will be evaluated by having a salary of $38,050 or higher, a number determined by the five-year post graduation median salary for 2022.

In September, the Board of Academic Affairs Standing Committee will review the list of programs before turning the program list over to universities. The schools will have three options: axing the underperforming program, merging the undergraduate program with another program in a cost-effective way or to making an action plan for the program, buying it three years.

By March of 2024, all state universities will give their decisions to the committee, which will make the final call on whether the undergraduate program in question should be phased out, merged or put on an action plan. Over the following years, the universities will give reviews on the program’s progress and effectiveness.

Regents spokesman Matt Keith said the board used input from academic affairs leaders across the state universities in making the revised process.

“The Regents and state university leaders recognized that the process needed strengthening and began a thorough academic portfolio review last year,” Keith said. “Following the completion of that review earlier this year, the Board Academic Affairs Standing Committee worked with the state university provosts to revise the academic program review process and better align it with the Board’s strategic plan.”

Tanya Gonzalez, interim associate provost for institutional effectiveness at Kansas State University, said the review process was aligned well with the university’s pre-existing internal review process.

“Some advantages to KBOR’s updated program review process is that it asks institutions to develop meaningful processes for their internal review; make data-driven decisions; share those processes and outcomes with the Regents; and use program review success stories to external stakeholders,” Gonzalez said.

But others point to Emporia State’s realignment plan as an example of what could happen when the Regents are involved with program decisions. The university fired nearly three dozen faculty members, including those with tenure, and eliminated English, journalism and other programs in 2022 due to programs not meeting certain metrics.

ESU also recently announced plans to merge several departments and programs, including merging the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences into their new School of Science & Mathematics.

Students and faculty raised concerns about consolidation at FHSU within the College of Art, Humanities and Social Sciences in spring 2022. However, that consolidation was completed as scheduled the following fall.

The American Association of University Professors investigation found the actions taken by ESU president Ken Hush with the KBOR support were little more than an attack on academic freedom. The investigation concluded university administrators and Kansas Board of Regents members are “unfit to lead.”

Former ESU English professor Rachelle Smith, who worked at ESU for 28 years before her job was eliminated, said she and her colleagues saw the Regents’ actions at ESU as a test case.

“I’m not surprised that KBOR has come out with this decision,” Smith said. “We wondered and suspected that ESU was just the beginning of what would happen with the other regional schools in the state.”

Smith, who taught courses in indigenous literature and science fiction during her last semester at ESU, believed the firings and department dissolving were the result of political pressures due to a significant faction within the GOP-controlled state Legislature that disapproves of diversity and multicultural teaching.

She said the review process could be a convenient way for institutions to get rid of any curriculum they didn’t want taught.

“The individual institutions themselves can use that as an opportunity to get rid of people that they don’t want and to get rid of programs that they don’t want and to ensure that research goes in directions that they want,” Smith said.

DeCesare, who served as one of the ESU investigators for AAUPP, said it was difficult to trust the Regents’ intentions with other public universities. DeCesare said a board that had already “abused power in the recent past” shouldn’t be judging other academic programs.

“It was the board, as the report says, that initiated the process that assaulted tenure and imperiled academic freedom at ESU,” DeCesare said.

He warned that the bipartisan nine-person board, all of whom were appointed by Gov. Laura Kelly, could be prone to political pressures.

“When educators don’t make decisions anymore about what education looks like, and when those decisions are in the hands of presidents and provosts and governing board members instead, it just kind of begs for to create a system that is ripe for political interference, political pressure, ideological interference, and all kinds of things that have no place in an institution of higher education,” Decesare said.

For Smith, the timing of the review process is suspicious.

“I don’t think it is innocuous,” Smith said. “I think that the current board is working hand in hand with the state Legislature to enact political goals of a conservative nature.”