Dive Brief:
- After unveiling a sweeping restructuring initiative earlier this spring, St. Cloud State University leaders on Tuesday announced a finalized plan that preserves a handful of degree programs previously on the chopping block.
- The public Minnesota university now aims to cut 42 degrees, paring down its bachelor’s and graduate programs to 94 going forward. The earlier plan would have cut even more, down to 90.
- The reductions are meant to help fix chronic multimillion dollar deficits at the institution. St. Cloud State’s cost to deliver coursework is higher than any other institution in the Minnesota State system, Dan Golombiecki, St. Cloud State’s interim vice president for finance and administration, noted in a Tuesday presentation to campus.
Dive Insight:
In their presentation, college leaders noted that St. Cloud State’s enrollment has stabilized at around 10,000 students and its revenue numbers are strong, with $140 million projected for fiscal 2024.
But the university’s expenses have outgrown its revenue, leading to an $18 million deficit in fiscal 2023 and a projected $4.7 million deficit for 2024. That makes for an “unsustainable financial situation” that is out of step with the rest of the Minnesota State universities' instruction cost per student, according to Golombiecki’s presentation.
Larry Lee, acting president for the university, told Higher Ed Dive in May that the academic cuts are “a matter of right-sizing” its portfolio. The university’s current cost base “takes away from the operation of the entire campus,” Lee said then.
Following recent discussions on campus, including with bargaining units, officials have now opted to moderately lighten the cuts. St. Cloud State leaders elected to keep the university’s bachelor’s programs in manufacturing engineering technology and studio art, and master’s degrees in software engineering and social studies.
Those getting cut are wide-ranging, including everything from music-related programs to sociology, Spanish, physics, gender and women’s studies, hydrology and economics. The deepest cuts are in the university’s colleges of liberal arts and science and engineering.
Additionally, the plan calls for eliminating 50 minor programs, bringing the new total to 35.
Along with program suspensions, St. Cloud State plans to cut roughly 55 faculty jobs. Of those, 35 faculty members will be let go by May 2025, while the rest will stay with the university until May 2027.
“These notices represent substantial lead times, which are not commonly afforded to many workers in the public sphere,” university leaders said in a fact sheet. The latest faculty cuts save a handful of positions compared with the initial restructuring plan.
From here, administrators and faculty will develop a plan for students to finish their degrees in programs bound for elimination, according to the presentation.
St. Cloud State’s cuts are among the deepest and most dramatic currently being proposed in the sector. However, the university is part of a growing cohort of institutions proposing restructuring initiatives, including staff and faculty reductions, as well as program cuts and revamps.
