The University of Kansas campus is pictured Friday, Feb. 6, 2015.
Fifteen undergraduate programs at the University of Kansas have been identified as low-enrollment programs, and two of them as well as an entire department will be discontinued.
KU will discontinue the Humanities and Visual Art Education degrees. Discontinuing the Visual Art Education degree would save about $100,000, and discontinuing the Humanities degree would save about $400,000, Bichelmeyer said. In addition to the Humanities degree, KU is discontinuing the Humanities department.
Of the remaining 13 undergraduate programs KU identified, seven were recommended to merge with other programs, six were recommended to continue. After hearing a presentation by KU Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer on Wednesday, the Board of Regents voted unanimously to approve the recommendations.
photo by: Screenshot of OneKU s Defend KU virtual town hall
Over 200 people attended a virtual town hall on Feb. 4 put on by a group of University of Kansas faculty members who object to a new Kansas Board of Regents policy that would eliminate tenure protections.
A group of University of Kansas faculty hosted a virtual town hall Thursday night to discuss a recent Kansas Board of Regents policy that one faculty member said would be “the beginning of the end of tenure” in higher education.
The group, called OneKU, is composed of faculty who consider themselves promoters and defenders of quality public higher education and advocates for KU’s mission as a research institution dedicated to the creation of knowledge for the public good. The group’s event, which was called “Defend KU,” gathered over 200 attendees on Zoom.
Strong Hall on the University of Kansas campus is shown on Sept. 13, 2018.
Updated at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday
The University of Kansas will put together a framework for a new Kansas Board of Regents policy that would give university CEOs more power to dismiss, suspend or terminate employees, even those with tenure, according to a statement from Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer.
Bichelmeyer said in a video message Tuesday that while KU was reserving the option of using the policy, she hoped that it would not have to.
Tenure has long been viewed in the academic community as a way to ensure professors’ academic freedom by preventing dismissal except for the most extraordinary reasons.
Strong Hall on the University of Kansas campus is shown on Sept. 13, 2018.
Hundreds of University of Kansas faculty and staff members are objecting to a new Kansas Board of Regents policy that they say circumvents professional standards and violates the university’s commitments as a member of the American Association of Universities.
On Jan. 20, the Kansas Board of Regents approved a two-year policy that gives university CEOs more power to suspend, dismiss or terminate employees including tenured faculty members in light of the financial crisis many universities face.
A statement signed by more than 550 KU faculty and staff members states that the policy violates two of the three core principles of the Association of American Universities: shared governance and academic freedom. It also bypasses established processes KU already had in place in the instance of declared financial exigency.