Low enrollment classes cancelled early

A message sent out by Keene State College President Helen Giles-Gee on Friday, April 23, notified the campus community that, in order to reduce and control costs, courses with low enrollment will be reviewed for possible cancellation beginning on May 7, months earlier than previous years.

    “Forty-four of fifty states are experiencing budget deficits and these affect public colleges and universities,” the message read. “In New Hampshire, the governor and legislature are working to cut $200 million dollars from the state budget and have yet to determine the allocation to the University System of New Hampshire (USNH).”
The message urged students to register for courses by May 6. Registrar Tom Richard said the office received immediate concerns.

“The minute her e-mail came out we got e-mails from faculty and from students that, to some extent, border on paranoia unnecessarily,” Richard said. “There were things that faculty wanted to do to shift things around that put the Registrar’s Office in an inappropriate position to decide whether we should or not.”

However, according to Richard, the number of students registering since the message was sent out, changed very little.

“We’re looking for about 600 students who are eligible to register who haven’t registered. That’s a lot of people,” Richard said.

Richard said student registration is mostly a concern with seniors. Although a record 60 percent of seniors registered for fall courses so far, other cohorts have much higher registration rates (86 percent freshmen, 89 percent sophomores, 92 percent juniors).
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Emile Netzhammer said the motivation for sending out the e-mail was to attempt to keep students from waiting until the June 30 deadline or the week of August 23 to register.

“The reason I felt working with the president getting this information out is that there are cultures in some departments where students don’t register in March and April, they wait until they get back in August,” Netzhammer said. “Given the uncertainty of the fiscal situation and given our real need to create more seats in high demand areas I didn’t want them [students] leaving and the president didn’t want them leaving with this traditional view that the courses will still be there when they get back in the fall.”

Netzhammer said the various deans of the college will report at the regular Academic Affairs Council meeting with a list of courses with fewer than six students registered. From there, the group will determine whether or not the course will be up for cancellation. Netzhammer said decisions will be made promptly in order for students to have time to adjust their schedules before June 30.

With course cancellation occurring sooner, departments will be given time to restructure their offerings to students. According to Netzhammer, this may include rearranging prerequisites for courses so they are open to more students and offering some courses by semester instead of year-round. One potential shift may occur in upper level electives targeted towards juniors and seniors. These often specialization courses are small in numbers, according to Netzhammer, and could be cut. Special attention will be given to courses with low enrollments that are required for majors or minors. Courses with low enrollment due to freshmen registration in June will not be considered until a later date.
Through these changes, the college will offer fewer sections, thereby saving funds. In addition, Netzhammer said moving adjuncts and adjunct dollars will ultimately save funds while shifting focus to high-demand areas.

Vice President for Finance and Planning Jay Kahn said bumping up the process is both a good business and academic practice.

“We know that in this fiscal year we spent significantly more for adjunct taught courses than we had originally budgeted and in part that’s a result of late schedules, adding additional sections prior to the fall semester. We were adding classes before we were deleting, so there’s that inefficiency that I think this new process is going to help us avoid,” Kahn said.

Kahn said the college has also curbed spending in utilities by purchasing new, longer-term contracts for fuel and electricity as well as starting the cogeneration plant. He said within the next year, studies will be done on the amount of printing supplies the college uses and how digitization of documents could curb the costs of paper and toner.

In lieu of saving money, the disappearance or restructuring of a number of courses leaves some feeling torn.

Despite having low enrollment, professor Rosemary Gianno’s Cultural Investigations anthropology course will most likely not be cut because it is required for the minor. She said she understands the reasoning for the cuts, but sees the other side as well.
“I feel like you want to be teaching more students,” Gianno said. “Economically, I suppose it’s in the college’s interest to have more students in a class. On the other hand, if you’ve got a major or minor program you need to staff that, and provide the courses students need in that major or minor, so there is a certain tension there and it’s unfortunate.”

 Netzhammer said the change will prove beneficial for the college in the long run.
“It feels to me more a cultural shift than a change in our practices. I think ultimately it’s going to serve students more because they’re going to have better notice around when this is happening. It serves the institution better because we have more flexibility to both save resources and reallocate them into areas that students need,” Netzhammer said. “It is partly about the fiscal health of the institution but it is also very much about serving our students as we go through this.”

Corey Smith can be contacted at csmith@keeneequinox.com