Salt Lake Community College will bolster workforce training programs as part of its plan to comply with state-mandated budget restructuring. It will also cut 48 academic programs and slash administrative costs.
The state’s largest two-year college is also taking the extra step of cutting $581,620 more than it had to. School leaders say this reflects their focus on doing what’s best for students rather than just compliance. SLCC serves the most diverse population compared to others in Utah’s public higher education system, with a high percentage of first-generation students.
Earlier this year, lawmakers withheld base funding from the state’s public colleges and universities. To get that money back, each school has to cut “lower-performing” programs and shift funds to more “high-demand” areas. For SLCC, about $5.2 million is on the line.
All eight of the state’s degree-granting institutions had to submit their final drafts to the Utah System of Higher Education by May 23. The plans will be presented and potentially approved at the June 6 board meeting before going to the Legislature for final approval later in the summer.
In SLCC’s plan, which was emailed to faculty on May 22, the college proposes program cuts from every academic college except health sciences. An additional 12 programs would be consolidated, and 237 courses eliminated.
Interim Provost for Academic Affairs Jason Pickavance said SLCC’s course catalog was overstuffed and that might have made things harder for students. He pointed to literature from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. It argues that, especially for first-generation students, offering too many options and then asking them to make a lot of choices can create barriers to graduation. So with the required budget restructuring, Pickavance said they focused on simplifying choices and providing clearer pathways. That simplification also reduces bureaucratic work and costs.
“We feel like that's just going to be easier for us to be sustainable as an institution, to have fewer associates and certificates,” he said. “But making it smaller doesn't necessarily mean that you're reducing opportunity. You're just simplifying by bringing some things together, by consolidating choices.”
While there are certain subjects future students will not be able to get a degree in, like marketing and anthropology, Pickavance said they will still be taught. Students could even get an emphasis in some of those disciplines. However, some programs were cut entirely. The arts, humanities and social sciences are seeing the least amount of reinvestment dollars compared to other academic colleges.
“I don't think it's fair to say that we totally hosed the humanities and arts,” Pickavance said. “I think that we were really strategic about areas in the humanities where we had a lot of non-instructional pieces that we’re able to cut.”
The School of Arts, Communication & Media will be closed, and those programs shifted into other colleges, eliminating one dean position. Across the board, the school is getting rid of five administrator positions. It’s also eliminating several faculty and staff positions, some of which are vacant, and 35 employees will likely be laid off. But the college said most of those impacted can transfer to a different job in the college or pursue retirement. The college also plans to add nine new faculty positions.
About a third of the overall cuts, Pickavance estimated, came from staffing positions not directly related to instruction.
It will also close its Community Writing Center in Salt Lake’s Library Square, as well as close library and testing services at the school’s Miller Campus.
The biggest chunk of the cut funds, over $2.1 million, will be reallocated to technical programs, like Emergency Medical Technician, law enforcement officer, advanced manufacturing and firefighting. Pickavance said some of those programs were previously funded in a unique way that put a lot of the cost on students, and this change will make them more affordable. He sees technical programs as an area where not only can the college grow student enrollment, but he also sees those certificates as a gateway into postsecondary education for students who may feel like an associate’s or bachelor’s degree is currently out of reach.
The college’s business school will also be restructured by cutting certificates and putting more focus on certain “high-demand” pathways. The School of Health Sciences will get a $586,000 funding boost because Pickavance said that’s an area of critical need that leads to good jobs.
The framework that lawmakers gave schools prioritized workforce demand. While SLCC is investing more in training programs, Pickavance thinks the college did a good job of preserving things like the arts and social sciences.
“I do think that students at a community college deserve to both enter the workforce and they also deserve the opportunity to major in philosophy and in English and the social sciences or the arts,” he said. “I don't want to be a leader at a college that doesn't have those things.”
