Policy on the Merger or Discontinuance of Programs Under the Aegis of the Graduate School

This policy statement specifies principles, criteria and procedures to assure that graduate programs at the University of Minnesota remain strong and that they contribute to the overall mission of the University. Extensive changes in the environment of universities in general, including shifting areas of national and international interests and priorities, changing career opportunities, and greatly reduced budgetary support, create pressures to restructure programs. A clear policy statement on merger or discontinuation of graduate programs is essential to guide such a process. Any restructuring2 of graduate programs must be accomplished according to accepted principles rather than expediency.

The principles stated here derive from faculty recommendations developed in 1982 during extended discussions of possible program closures. Those principles are equally relevant now. In addition, five general criteria for evaluating programs are included that were outlined in the 1986 document "A Strategy for Focus" and recently reiterated by President Hasselmo regarding establishing a strategy for restructuring the array of graduate programs.

Principles

Two sets of conditions were identified in the 1982 discussions that could generate an impetus for restructuring: declining relevance of a program to current needs, and critical decline in a program's quality. A third set of conditions, economic necessity, was deemed at that time to be an inappropriate basis for either merger or discontinuance. It is now recognized that economic concerns may be relevant to restructuring, but that they should not be the basis on which restructuring is initiated. The spirit of these considerations is reaffirmed here as the first principle.

Principle 1

Restructuring should be primarily to increase relevance and/or quality. If economic savings can be accomplished without sacrificing program quality, they should be pursued.

Serious decline of a program on one or more of the general criteria on page 2 may indicate a need for restructuring; such declines may also represent temporary aberrations. Therefore:

Principle 2

Restructuring must take place in orderly stages.

The first stage is to involve all relevant faculty, current graduate students and, as necessary, relevant budgetary dean(s) and provost(s) to determine whether restructuring might be beneficial. If the answer is yes, the second stage is to develop a proposal, either for merger or for discontinuance, which is as broadly acceptable to the affected parties as possible. The proposal is presented to the appropriate Graduate School Policy and Review Council(s) and, if approved, to the Graduate School Executive Committee. The last stage is forwarding the proposal to the Board of Regents.

There are three final principles implied in the stages outlined.

Principle 3

Graduate faculty, graduate students, budgetary college deans and provosts of all programs affected must be involved in restructuring decisions and actions.

Principle 4

The rights and interests of current graduate students in restructured programs must be identified and accommodated such that those students are not disadvantaged.

Principle 5

Responsibility for restructuring of graduate programs rests in the Graduate School. A restructuring process may be initiated either by the programs involved or by the Graduate School.

Criteria

The five criteria, with explanatory excerpts from the 1986 document, are:

Quality

"... of the faculty (in teaching, research and service as reflected in peer national ratings, publications, outside funding), ... of students, library collections, and other indices."

Centrality

"... of research, instruction and service represents a program's contribution to a coherent whole which helps to sustain and stimulate related work elsewhere in the university."

Comparative Advantage

"... the unique characteristics of each program that make it particularly appropriate in this university? ... What is the rationale for the program at the University of Minnesota?"

Demand

"The direction of change in demand.... Other indicators ... [are] number of applications, quality of acceptances, services performed in support of other programs degrees awarded, instruction of students or research undertaken for the solution of pressing problems of society."

Efficiency and Effectiveness.

"When taken together, efficiency and effectiveness provide an important measure of whether funds are being put to the best use."

Quality, efficiency and effectiveness address aspects internal to a program; centrality places the program in a larger university context; and demand and comparative advantage stress the university's place in the larger structure of societal needs and conditions external to the university. No single criterion will dominate evaluation of specific programs.

Merger

Small graduate programs can sometimes satisfy narrow market niches. However, when the number of faculty, graduate courses and students in any graduate program become too small, adequate breadth of coursework and depth of student experience cannot be maintained. It may then be necessary to ask whether the program can effectively be combined with other, closely related programs or should be discontinued.

Merger means that two or more programs are combined, either by smaller programs forming one larger, joint program or by a small program becoming part of a larger one. In either instance, a single, unified program will result. The graduate degree for the unified program will have the following characteristics:

• one DGS, replacing the previous individual program DGSs
• one graduate faculty
• one admissions procedure
• in most cases, one set of required core courses, although different areas of emphasis may be pursued within the scope of the unified degree program.
• in most cases, one program designator, which will be only the doctoral program designation for all doctoral students in the program, both for transcripts and for diplomas. Therefore earlier individual doctoral program designations will no longer be available. This policy does not preclude continuation of separate, viable MA or MS programs.

Exceptions to these requirements may be requested under special circumstances and will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Discontinuance

When a program is not deemed viable and a satisfactory merger of a program cannot be effected, it will be necessary to discontinue the program. Such discontinuance will provide satisfactory options for graduate students currently enrolled in the program, or on leave, to complete their work.

Indicators and Warning Levels

Indicators which will be regularly monitored are shown below with their "warning levels." When one or more of the indicators passes below the specified warning level, the Graduate School will initiate a dialog with appropriate Head(s) or Chair(s), Director of Graduate Studies and Dean(s). The initial focus of such dialogue will be to determine whether the program is adequate despite the purely numerical indicators. If quality is high, no further action should be undertaken. If quality has deteriorated in recent years, the focus should be on whether the program can reasonably expect timely recovery, including whether specific resources are needed to aid that recovery. If quality is low and recovery is unlikely, discussion will then proceed to questions about the future of the program.

It must be recognized that these warning levels may not apply equally for all programs. For programs in which master's and doctoral students jointly participate in the same curriculum, it may be appropriate to count all graduate students when considering specific indicators. That may occur, for example, when the master's degree is an entry level for potential doctoral students or when a program is primarily doctoral but enables acquiring a master's degree en route to the doctorate. Such circumstances imply that the larger pool of graduate students constitutes a single intellectual milieu. On the other hand, if a program has clearly separate master's and doctoral programs, such as a professional master's and a research doctorate, the two sets of students have little common curriculum and cannot be considered to generate a common intellectual milieu. In such cases, the indicators and warning levels will apply separately to the master's and doctoral programs. The emphasis of the criteria, then, is whether there are sufficient faculty and fellow students to provide the type of intellectual enrichment that represents quality graduate education.

All specified indicators and numerical warning levels are for purposes of monitoring to determine whether inquiry should be initiated. The particular numbers stated in this policy document will be reexamined annually to determine the extent to which, on the basis of experience, they should be revised. Other, often subjective, indicators of quality, demand, etc., are recognized as relevant to the question of a need for restructuring. All such information should be considered before any recommendations to restructure are formulated. The ultimate focus must be on program outcomes, in terms of the five general criteria stated previously.

The spirit of this policy is to provide a basis for regular assessments of graduate education at the University of Minnesota. Indicators and warning levels that are specified below are intended to assure:

• that there are sufficient faculty in the program for a broad treatment of the program's subject, and for adequate advising and faculty-student interaction,
• that there are sufficient fellow students to provide a rich environment of mutual learning and discovery,
• that there is sufficient opportunity for strictly graduate level instruction,
• that graduates of the program have a reasonable probability of appropriate employment,
• that students who have enrolled in the program have a reasonable probability of completing their degree,
• that there is ample opportunity for intellectual development beyond the boundaries of the specific program, and
• that there are no uniquely troublesome signs such as program disorganization, poor or inadequate instruction, poor faculty productivity, or lack of student confidence in the program.

Warning levels as minima are more easily articulated than are other signs of possible deficiency relevant to the specified criteria. Yet it is recognized that large programs may encounter quite different problems, such as too high a ratio of students to faculty to enable effective advising, or insufficient involvement of a large portion of the listed program faculty. It is also recognized that many programs have responded to smaller placement markets by reducing the size of new student cohorts. Such a response is academically responsible, and should not be a basis for judging the program as inadequate based on sheer numbers of students enrolled. However, if the market has so diminished as to call into question the future of the particular discipline, then restructuring may be indicated.

Any policy must be flexible enough to accommodate special circumstances. It is neither possible nor useful to specify all such special circumstances, especially given the current pace of change in the world of higher education. A small program may serve a unique niche well, a new program will need time to establish enrollments and reputation, a program losing several senior faculty through retirement may need time to effect new appointments, or a program which admits alternately large, then small, cohorts should not be judged simply on the small cohort statistics. Programs which have a shorter average time to degree may have fewer students enrolled at any given time, hence enrollment data must be interpreted accordingly. In some instances, comparison to comparable programs in other major universities may be more relevant than comparison to these particular numerical standards. Finally, program trends over time may be more informative than specific numbers at any given time. Yet these types of special circumstance are not readily gleaned from existing data bases for the purpose of routine assessment. Recognizing a need for flexibility regarding numerical levels does not invalidate regular oversight using available data. It does justify interpreting potential warning signs in the spirit of assuring quality graduate education rather than of absolute application of arbitrary benchmarks.

This index is being developed from a network analysis of all graduate programs at the university.

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1. This policy was provisionally approved for one year by the Executive Committee of the Graduate School, December 3, 1996. The policy was finally approved by the Executive Committee on March 3, 1999. Plans to develop the centrality index listed on Page 6 have been discontinued.

2. "Restructuring" is used throughout to refer to either merger or discontinuance.