UNC Asheville is cutting programs key to its liberal arts mission. What happens next?

When Rodger Payne saw a job posting 17 years ago that sought someone who could start a religious studies department at UNC Asheville, he was drawn to the possibilities it presented.

Payne, a native of Western North Carolina, at the time was the chair of the philosophy and religious studies department at Louisiana State University — “a huge university,” in Payne’s words, that enrolled a total of nearly 30,000 students in 2007.

He felt that UNC Asheville, which has historically been designated as the UNC System’s liberal arts university and has enrolled just a few thousand students each year, would offer him a better experience.

“I really thought I would be much happier in a place that was focused on undergraduate teaching in the liberal arts,” Payne told The News & Observer.

He got the job and joined UNCA in the fall of 2007. Over two years, he developed the curriculum and hired a second faculty member for the new department. By the fall of 2009, the university’s Department of Religious Studies was off and running. A year later, Payne recalled, more than three dozen students had selected religious studies as their major.

Soon, though, there were signs of decline. During and after the Great Recession, students nationwide became less likely to pursue majors in the liberal arts and humanities, often opting instead for STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — subjects and other professional degrees perceived to lead to higher paying jobs. About a decade later, the COVID-19 pandemic “hit us very hard” and further impacted the department’s enrollment, Payne said, which “was unfortunate in its timing.”

That’s because it coincided with significant enrollment declines across the university, with the total student count dropping by about 25% over the past six years. The decline was a major factor in a $6 million budget shortfall the university faced in the 2023-24 fiscal year, which in turn led Chancellor Kimberly van Noort to pursue a variety of cost-cutting and cost-saving measures this spring.

Those measures included an “academic portfolio review” that resulted in four academic departments being cut from the university’s offerings and a fifth being reduced. It was not the first review of its kind in the UNC System last academic year, with UNC Greensboro in February cutting 20 programs amid its own budget issues. The UNC System Board of Governors approved both sets of cuts at its July meeting.

But at UNC Asheville, the cuts notably included Payne’s religious studies department, plus philosophy and ancient Mediterranean studies, or classics — all generally considered key elements of the humanities, which are central to a liberal arts education. (Drama is the fourth program being cut. Two concentrations — French and German — will be eliminated from the university’s languages and literatures department, but Spanish will remain.)

Van Noort, in an interview with The N&O, indicated the university is not abandoning its liberal arts traditions. They will remain an underlying base for all students, regardless of their major, she said.

“I think the best way to describe the direction that we’re moving is really to, kind of, modernize the curriculum while still holding very strongly those things that are very important,” van Noort said.

Still, the move has caused some within the university community, as well as some outside of it, to question where the university goes next — and whether UNC Asheville can still be the champion of the humanities and liberal arts that it was historically intended to be.

“My thoughts are that the elimination of these four programs,” Payne said, “will make a mockery of our claim to be a liberal arts institution.”

Period of decline for the liberal arts

Generally, a liberal arts education includes a variety of subjects within the natural and social sciences, math, arts and the humanities. Instead of training for a specific job or career path and taking courses solely in that area, students learn how to think critically, collaborate and solve problems using the skills they learn across disciplines, usually in smaller class settings.

Proponents of such education say the liberal arts help students establish a foundation of valuable skills that aren’t just useful right out of college, but continue to serve students throughout their life.

“Liberal arts offer students ways to learn more about themselves and the world that they live in. They learn about our history and what makes us all human,” said Jenna Robinson, president of the North Carolina-based James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative education think tank.

But nationwide, fewer students are now completing degrees in the liberal arts — and specifically, the humanities, which has seen a consistent decrease in majors since at least 2012, according to the Hechinger Report. That dynamic seemingly came to a head within the past academic year, as universities around the country — notably, West Virginia University — cut liberal arts programs to address financial pressures.

The financial pressures at both UNC Asheville and UNC Greensboro stemmed from years-long periods of enrollment declines at the universities. After a 2022 policy change by the UNC System Board of Governors, campuses in the public university system are funded largely based on their performance, instead of enrollment growth — but they still receive funding partially based on student credit hours, which can be impacted by overall enrollment numbers.

A handful of other universities in the system are also facing enrollment and budget issues, including Winston-Salem State University, where the interim chancellor in May eliminated 55 positions to help deal with a more than $3 million deficit. In addition to the portfolio review, van Noort pursued other measures to address UNC Asheville’s deficit, including eliminating a dozen administrative positions.

Under a revised policy, approved by the Board of Governors in May, all campuses in the UNC System will now be required to undertake academic portfolio reviews every seven years. But the system’s chief academic officer described the policy to The N&O as “forward-looking,” and anticipated that it would not necessarily yield major cuts like those at UNCA and UNCG.

About 60 of UNC Asheville’s roughly 2,900 students are affected by the four programs and two language concentrations being eliminated. Put another way, the eliminated programs made up 20% of the university’s academic departments, but enrolled less than 3% of the students overall, van Noort said.

The overall decline in humanities and liberal arts enrollments — not just at UNCA, but more broadly — could be tied to students’ concerns about securing their first job post-graduation, particularly in an era defined by high levels of student debt.

A 2022 paper by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pragya Systems, an organization dedicated to “improving the relevance of higher education,” posited that students are concerned about the return-on-investment of a liberal arts education.

“Prospective students may now struggle to see liberal arts colleges — often viewed as steeped in tradition rather than in technology — as a worthy investment to help prepare them for careers upon graduation,” the paper stated.

But the paper argued that liberal arts colleges may be some of the best-positioned schools to teach students “human skills,” such as critical thinking, creativity and collaboration, which employers are increasingly seeking “and cannot be directly replicated by today’s technology.”

Finding value in the liberal arts

UNC Asheville serves as the headquarters of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC), a decades-old cohort of schools across 28 states and one Canadian province that champions the benefits of liberal arts education at public universities.

COPLAC president Cole Woodcox told The N&O he believes students’ interest in the liberal arts has not necessarily decreased, but some colleges could do a better job of showing students the value such an education can hold.

“I don’t think there’s less interest in it,” Woodcox said. “I think there’s less awareness of what it has to offer.”

Van Noort, contending that UNCA will continue to honor its liberal arts history and mission, noted that the liberal arts can be hard to define or understand. But in her eyes, they are more than a group of subjects and majors.

“Is it the courses? Is it the titles of the departments that we have? Or is it the outcomes?” she said. “And I like to think that it’s the outcomes.”

Van Noort said the university will continue to emphasize “super strong critical thinking skills, communication and synthetic skills, the ability to collaborate and to work in an interdisciplinary manner” to students.

But there is a need to modernize the curriculum and appeal to new skills that students seek for their careers, van Noort said. She pointed to private Furman University, in South Carolina, as a leading example of a liberal arts college that has adapted its curriculum to include professional programs, such as public health, while continuing to hold strong to its liberal arts core.

“We need to think about, sort of, how do we preserve and nurture that liberal arts foundation, while also responding to student desire to [meet] the increasing requirements of careers,” van Noort said.

A public liberal arts college

Prior to this spring’s academic portfolio review, UNCA had already made efforts to expand its brand, changing its mission statement in 2022 to indicate as much. Previously known as the UNC System’s “designated public liberal arts university,” UNCA is now the system’s “designated public liberal arts and sciences university.”

Van Noort said the change was meant to signal to prospective students and the public that the university offers degrees in the sciences and “to remind people that the sciences are part of the liberal arts.” It also aligned with the number of students majoring in the natural and social sciences eclipsing the number majoring in the humanities, she said.

But the change raised questions for Robinson, of the Martin Center, who wrote in a July article that adding “sciences” to the university’s mission statement “makes it less distinct, not more so” — potentially cutting against van Noort’s vision for the university.

“If UNCA wants to survive as an institution, it must find ways to attract students — ways to distinguish itself amongst its competitors and peers. Its current plan is a tacit acceptance of decline that merely stanches the bleeding,” Robinson wrote. “It’s not too late for UNC Asheville to reverse course — to lean in as the only dedicated liberal-arts institution in the state. It should do so.”

Speaking to The N&O, Robinson said a lessened focus on the liberal arts at UNCA would be a detriment to the UNC System.

“I think a liberal arts education can be for everybody and should be available to North Carolinians,” she said, adding that while the liberal arts are available at other schools, such as UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC Asheville has been somewhat unique in its specific focus on the subjects.

Payne, of the religious studies department, echoed that sentiment. One of the “great things” about the UNC System, he said, is that all 17 of its campuses “have their own special missions.”

“And if ours is undergraduate liberal arts, and we’re cutting out the heart of the liberal arts, then we can’t claim that title anymore,” Payne said.

While some may think of the liberal arts as synonymous with small, private, elite colleges, UNC Asheville and other public liberal arts universities are able to provide such education at a much more affordable price tag.

Duane Davis, a philosophy professor at UNC Asheville who has taught at the university for more than 25 years, worries that cuts to the liberal arts at public universities like UNCA will make them less accessible.

“The only places that are going to offer the kind of rich educational environment that we were providing are going to be very expensive, private institutions,” Davis said. “And that’s what’s really, really sad.”

Which programs were cut, and which were spared

UNC Asheville’s general education requirements, which all students are required to complete, will continue to include each of the core areas of the broader liberal arts.

But of the four majors van Noort chose to eliminate, three are part of the humanities — calling into question the university’s future plans for the discipline that it describes as “the cornerstone” of its liberal arts curriculum.

The four eliminated programs — religious studies, philosophy, ancient Mediterranean studies and drama — were identified during the portfolio review by an outside consultant, First Tryon Advisors, as either “unsustainable” or in low demand, or both. Other programs, including math, chemistry and physics, were identified as “too expensive” or in low demand, or both, but were spared by van Noort’s decision.

Van Noort told The N&O some of the spared programs, such as math, will be crucial as the university moves to emphasize subjects such as statistics, data science and engineering.

The eliminated majors, van Noort said, enrolled and graduated “very, very small” numbers of students. Payne took issue with that reasoning leading to the elimination of religious studies and other departments, saying “it seems to diminish, or even dismiss totally, what we bring to students who may be majoring in the social sciences, the natural sciences, or other areas of the humanities.”

At the July UNC System Board of Governors meeting, in which the board approved the proposed cuts, van Noort said the decision would eliminate the majors offered by the departments, but would not mark the end of teaching the subjects at the university.

“Many of these areas are vital to our curriculum,” she told the board. “We will continue to offer coursework and content in those areas.”

For example, religious studies, which has fewer than a dozen students enrolled as majors, is anticipated to continue as a minor after the major is eliminated. Department chair Kate Zubko said in an email to The N&O the minor will create “an ongoing pathway for students to study this important topic” at the university.

French and German, the two concentrations that were eliminated as majors with the curtailment of the languages department, can also be declared as minors, UNCA spokesperson Michael Strysick told The N&O. The other affected programs “may retain courses that contribute to our core curriculum and other complementary programs within the University,” Strysick said.

A separate humanities program and humanities minor will also continue, as will a handful of other humanities-centric departments, including English and history, a department that was also identified by First Tryon for possible elimination but spared by van Noort.

Impacts to faculty, students

Still, the cuts will come at a personal and professional cost for faculty like Payne and Davis.

Tenured and tenure-track faculty set to lose their jobs as a result of the cuts will be given six- to 12-months’ notice, while other affected faculty will receive notice or severance in accordance with UNC System policy. Van Noort said she does not anticipate making personnel decisions related to the cuts until the middle of the fall semester.

“It’s pretty devastating to me, emotionally and financially,” Davis told The N&O, adding that he did not have plans, prior to the program review, to retire anytime soon.

Aside from the impacts the cuts will have on faculty, Davis worries about how the reduction in dedicated liberal arts departments at the university will impact future students.

“That’s what the crisis is,” Davis said. “That’s what really hurts, not just for me, but for what we’re going to be doing to all the next generation of kids.”

Van Noort, at the July Board of Governors meeting, praised faculty in the affected departments, but explained she did not think it was feasible to keep many of them on given the low numbers of majors the departments produced. For example, the philosophy department, with six tenured faculty members, averaged fewer than five graduates in each academic year over the past five years, she said.

“Those faculty members are valued members of our community, do not get me wrong. They contribute greatly in all areas of our curriculum,” she said. “However, the cost of providing the upper-division courses needed for those majors is not tenable at the university.”

Students who declared their majors in the affected programs prior to them being identified for elimination will be able to complete their degrees, while new students will not be accepted into the programs. But some students are still unhappy with the university’s decision, and one student majoring in ancient Mediterranean studies told The N&O she decided to transfer away from UNCA after the program was cut.

It will likely take at least two or three years for the students in the eliminated majors to complete their studies and graduate.

Payne, who had entered phased retirement prior to the cuts, said he plans to teach two courses this fall: a first-year seminar and an upper-level class for existing religious studies majors. He also plans to teach a course in the spring.

“We have been told that we’re going to be able to guarantee our students that they will be able to graduate with a degree in religious studies,” Payne said. “And certainly I’m going to do everything I can to help with that, even if it means postponing retirement for a semester or two.”

In announcing the program eliminations in June, van Noort said that a “sustainable” enrollment for the university would be between 3,800 and 4,000 students by 2030, compared to the 2,925 students enrolled last fall.

Van Noort hopes the cuts, along with other cost-cutting measures, such as 12 administrative positions that were eliminated this spring, will put the university on better budgetary footing going forward — and avoid similar cuts in the future.

The right-sizing of the university’s budget, coupled with new efforts to recruit additional students, will “pave the way for the exciting new things” at the university, van Noort said. That includes emphasizing areas of study at the university with high interest from students.

The chancellor’s vision for the university is one of evolution, she told the Board of Governors in July.

“I firmly believe that liberal arts is evolving, and it will evolve,” van Noort said. “It must evolve.”