Cutting Programs Isn't a Strategy

Southern Oregon University unveiled a plan to sunset or consolidate 13 academic units, including music, creative writing, and gender studies, while outsourcing a wide range of administrative functions. The plan grew out of a Deloitte analysis (we so love our consultants in higher ed) and was primarily driven by their non-contextualized simplified math that ten academic units were operating at a loss, and the three largest programs accounted for 45% of enrollment. Not at all surprising, the SOU community pushed back and the faculty questioned the data (as they should!). They warned that making workforce alignment the university's "driving goal" would narrow SOU's role and subordinate its contributions to civic and cultural life. And they weren't exactly wrong there, but it's the dimension of SOU's plan that I believe is a little more nuanced than a consultant is capable of explaining to already skeptical faculty.

The way this plays out at most universities is a false equivalency between workforce alignment and the liberal arts. The way consultants see it (and the way universities are increasingly learning they need to see it) is a question of revenue. SOU is a regional public university in a state that ranks near the bottom in per-student higher education funding. Cutting programs that lose money is an understandable response to that reality. But it's a retreat, not a solution. The exact same logic is playing out right now at mid-tier tuition-dependent private universities across the country. Schools like Hampshire College, which recently announced closure, and dozens of others trimming programs and laying off staff, are running the same uninspired playbook designed to protect the high-enrollment programs, cut the low-enrollment ones and staff headcounts, then hope the math works out. It never does because the problem isn't cost, it's revenue.

A bolder plan recognizes that most of these universities already have an underutilized asset sitting inside them. Schools and divisions of professional and continuing education (PCE units) operate under the fundamentally different financial logic that requires them to be self-sustaining, responsive to employer demand, and capable of generating margins that cross-subsidize the rest of the institution. At universities considering the decaying playbook plan, a PCE-centered strategy means you're not abandoning music or creative writing, you're extending them with workforce-focused credentials like creative economy entrepreneurship programs or community arts management certifications. Virtually every traditional discipline already contains a workforce-aligned version of itself waiting to be unlocked. Philosophy serves ethics consulting, theater translates into executive communication training, sociology is applied to UX research, and education amplifies corporate learning design. PCE is the vehicle for these progressive applications of existing programs and faculty expertise, but most universities lack the internal incentives and structural bridges to unleash their PCE units, open new revenue streams without gutting faculty lines and staff positions, and do it without abandoning the university's cultural mission.