When a college cuts programs, what is it becoming?

Tree split by lightning.  Durham, NC

Colleges that cut programs always provide the same explanations: We are making cuts to balance the budget, or We are dropping programs that do not align with the market, or We are responding to demographic and cultural shifts, for instance. That is, they explain why they are taking the steps they are taking. There is nothing wrong with doing this.

But when they cut programs (or add them) colleges rarely describe what they hope to become. This omission is a problem.  Here are some reasons why:

The institution may be unwisely assuming that it will continue to be what it has been. Some colleges are fundamentally strong, and so the revision of their academic and administrative programs is a way to continue to be what they are.  But in many instances, schools with fundamental difficulties assume that changing the program array will preserve the institution as it is.  Making this assumption is unwise, if only because it keeps the institution from looking deeply enough at what needs to change in order for the institution to endure. 

The institution may not know what it actually is. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the past generation in higher education has been characterized by colleges adding programs and activities without attention to whether they support the institution’s vision, mission, market, and core competencies.  When such institutions find themselves in financial difficulty, they can try to cut or add programs without addressing the fundamental incoherence of the institution. Doing so is a failure, since competing views of what the institution is always limit the effectiveness of program revisions.  If faculty members believe they teach at a liberal arts college and the administration thinks it is leading a professional school, program optimization will be very difficult. If the enrollment team thinks they can attract local students and the president thinks their reach should be national, improving enrollment is impossible.

The institution may miss the opportunity to actually change. Higher education leaders like to say that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted.  While the comment itself can be callous, the sentiment behind it–that if change is coming, we should make the best of it–isn’t wrong.  But if an institution fails to describe what it is hoping to become as it works through difficulty, it will have missed the opportunity to choose wisely between good and better (or bad and worse) options. And it will struggle to design systems, processes, and policies that actually align with the decisions that are taken and the course the institution is following.

The institution may fail in its most basic obligations to its faculty, staff, and students. It is disheartening to eliminate activities.  It is horrible to say goodbye to colleagues whose positions have been eliminated.  It is worse when it feels like these changes don’t make life better for anyone. The explanation of what an institution hopes to become does these two things: it provides context for why the current cuts are being made, and it offers a vision of how, in the future, the pain will be less, the work will be different, the challenges won’t be the same as they are now. 

Describing a future different from the present is the most basic function of change management.  Telling people where you are taking them is the most fundamental task of leadership.