Contraction sounds like the responsible response to falling demand. It is also, in a university, remarkably difficult to do well — and frequently makes the financial position worse before it makes it better.
Smaller does not mean cheaper. A department at half size still needs a curriculum, a timetable, accreditation, a lab and a building. Closing a programme takes years, because students already enrolled are owed a teach-out, and a teach-out is the most expensive possible way to run a course. Redundancy costs money up front to save money later, which is precisely the wrong shape for an institution short of cash.
And shrinkage sends a signal. Applicants read course closures as instability, which reduces recruitment, which requires further shrinkage. This chapter sets out what responsible contraction would actually require.
They can contract, but contraction is not the reverse of expansion.
Regulated to Fail, Chapter 11
Where this goes next
This is the question the chapter opens with and the mechanism it identifies. What it concludes — and what follows from it — is in the book.
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