UNL proposing to eliminate six academic programs

Several departments are facing potential elimination as part of efforts to address the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's $21 million budget deficit and an additional $6.5 million in proactive cuts, Nebraska Public Media has learned.

According to a memorandum obtained by Nebraska Public Media, six academic programs would be discontinued: community and regional planning; earth and atmospheric sciences; educational administration; landscape architecture; statistics; and textile, merchandising and fashion design.

Four other departments could potentially merge — the entomology department with the plant pathology department, and the agricultural leadership, education and communication department with the agricultural economics department.

Also, two colleges, the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences, would see a combined reduction of $550,000 for state-aided funding for graduate assistantships.

The list of proposed cuts was made public Friday afternoon.

The $27.5 million deficit at the Lincoln campus is part of more than $40 million across the University of Nebraska system that needs to be cut. UNL Chancellor Rodney Bennett said in an August message that the reductions are needed following a smaller allocation from the state legislature.

“As you know, we have reduced our budget several times in recent years. Despite our best efforts to live within our means, our revenue has not kept pace with expenses,” Bennett said in an email to the campus community on Aug. 4. “This is due to a combination of downward trends in state appropriations, net tuition and campus allocations combined with historically high inflation of health care costs as well as property and liability premiums and utilities.”

Bennett said at the time that the budget-cutting process would likely include “potential elimination or mergers” of academic programs as well as the likely institution of a voluntary separation program.

Just days after that announcement, University of Nebraska President Dr. Jeffrey Gold announced a systemwide voluntary separation program for tenured faculty members 62 and older with at least 10 years of service.

The proposed academic cuts would save UNL a little more than $10 million, according to the memorandum. The remainder of the budget gap would be closed with a combination of staff cuts, the voluntary separation program, increased fundraising and a 1% cut to all state-aided budgets.

Elizabeth Niehaus, a professor in the Department of Educational Administration at UNL, said it was shocking to hear her department could be impacted by budget cuts a month ago. On Thursday, her department was told they could potentially be eliminated.

“We have an incredibly strong department. We have great students. We have a huge impact on the state,” Niehaus said. “Our faculty are award-winning and nationally recognized folks, and so we did not expect at all that we were even close to being in the budget cuts, let alone being completely eliminated.”

Niehaus said the budget process has lacked transparency, especially with the metrics her department was judged with.

“We still don't know how the decisions were made about which programs to cut beyond the fact that these metrics somehow led to a score, and then departments were ranked by that score,” Niehaus said. “The entire complexity of our work was reduced to a single number, and then we were ranked, and then they took the bottom 25 from that ranking and did something to choose which of those programs and departments to eliminate.”

On the university's webpage for the budget, some of the metrics are outlined in teaching and research, including student retention, credit hours and research awards. Leslie Reed, a UNL spokesperson, said in an email that "considerable effort was made to develop a nuanced approach that could be applied fairly across programs."

Students in education administration include aspiring principals and superintendents, as well as staff in higher education like academic advisors and residence life. Niehaus said there are at least 276 of their students and alumni who work across the NU system in various roles.

“It's hard to get folks to want to be principals and superintendents, and we're the ones who are educating those folks for those positions and helping them figure out how to do those jobs even better,” she said. “In higher education, similarly, we're having big problems with staff recruitment and retention, and we play a critical role in developing that workforce.”

Niehaus said the program is primarily online, which helps people in rural areas and in other states further their education. She was also recently promoted to a full professor, which she said was a year-long process of proving that she was meeting the university’s standards for excellence.

“In the 13 years that I have been here, we have never had someone in the department not meet those standards, not be tenured or promoted when they applied,” she said. “By all indications, we have been performing the job that we have been hired to do, things like excellence in teaching, innovative teaching, mentoring students, publishing research that has an impact on society and that is used by practitioners in our field.”

The Department of Educational Administration conferred 28 degrees in the 2023-24 school year, according to the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education. The Statistics department awarded seven degrees that same year, but awarded 20 in the previous school year — all graduate degrees or higher.

Susan VanderPlas, an associate professor of statistics, said her department only just started their undergraduate degree a few years ago, and are expecting the first graduates from it this year.

“It is extremely uncommon to not have a statistics department at a state land grant R1 institution the size of Nebraska. I can't think of other examples,” VanderPlas said. “In some places, the statisticians might be folded into the math department, but to not have statisticians at an institution is mind blowing.”

VanderPlas said she first heard of potential cuts earlier this week, but never imagined her whole department would be eliminated.

“We teach a lot of students from a lot of different departments and provide a lot of departments with training for their graduate students and their undergraduate students,” VanderPlas said. “We didn't really imagine that might happen.”

She added that the department also supports research across campus. VanderPlas said she recently received a grant to explore how people use charts and graphs and which types of charts are most effective. She’s also worked on research with forensics and collaborated with defense attorneys about scientific support for evidence.

The Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department awarded 11 degrees in the 2023-24 school year.

University officials previously proposed eliminating the Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design department in 2020, and nearly 200 supporters for the program spoke against the elimination at a Zoom hearing. Since then, the program has produced 105 graduates, including 18 in the 2023-24 school year.

The UNL chapter of the American Association of University Professors released a statement denouncing the proposed budget cuts. UNL AAUP President Sarah Zuckerman, who is also an associate professor in the educational administration department, said the cuts "are extremely short-sighted."

“They don’t take into account the long-term consequences of closing programs and letting faculty go who are uniquely valuable to the state of Nebraska," she said in the statement.

According to the AAUP, 58 full-time faculty, along with staff and part-time faculty, would lose their jobs.

Since the 2020 fiscal year, UNL has cut about $75 million from its budget, including $5 million in spring 2025. In 2024, the campus cut $12 million, including $800,000 to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion that closed later that year.

The campus community will have the chance to submit thoughts on the proposed cuts until Oct. 10. Each department will also have a hearing. Niehaus said she and her colleagues have already reached out to students and alumni for letters of support. The cuts won’t be finalized until the Board of Regents approve them.

UNL is not the only NU campus forced to make budget cuts, but others are dealing with them in different ways.

In July, the University of Nebraska Medical Center said it would require each college and unit to reduce its budget by 4% for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. UNMC did not quantify how big its budget deficit is.

Last month, the University of Nebraska at Kearney said it was working to close a $4.5 million budget deficit, although officials did not offer specifics on how it would do that.

The University of Nebraska at Omaha reported the smallest budget deficit, at $1.9 million. Chancellor Joanne Li said in an email to the campus last month that she plans to deal with the gap through “internal financial management, such as identifying efficiencies and expanding revenue streams.”

By way of full disclosure, members of the Nebraska Public Media newsroom are University of Nebraska-Lincoln employees.