Program Reductions at Seattle Pacific

To What End?

Back in mid-September, I had the privilege of giving the opening address at the Seattle Pacific University Faculty Retreat. It was held at Camp Casey on Whidbey Island which the university subsequently sold (I broke it!). This was about a week before the beginning of their fall quarter and I spoke on themes from my forthcoming book (pre-order here).

The week before I spoke, the faculty learned that many of them wouldn’t have their contracts renewed beyond Spring 2025 as part of a plan to “right-size” the budget. Others opted to retire or seek other positions to try to mitigate harm to younger faculty.

Last Friday, at the end of Fall quarter classes (exams come after Thanksgiving break), there was another meeting with faculty and staff announcing that further cuts were coming as entire programs would no longer be accepting new students. According to The Falcon, SPU’s student newspaper¹, that covered the meeting, the following programs will no longer be offered:

Art History, Applied Math, Cellular Biology, Molecular Biology, Bachelors in Chemistry, Christian Theology, Computer Engineering, International Sustainable Development, History, Information Systems, Journalism, Life Sciences, Nutrition and Dietetics, Food and Nutritional Sciences, Philosophy, Physics, Social Justice, Cultural Studies, and Special Education.

Part of the rationale for these reductions is that the SPU financial situation was every more challenging that leadership thought last spring. Undergraduate enrollment has fallen from 2912 FTE in 2018 to 2622 post-Covid 2021 to 2081 in 2023 to 1776 this fall. As the student paper observes, it’s not clear how much of the loss has been due to Covid or economic concerns and how much can be attributed to the LGBTQ+ conflicts at SPU over the past few years.

Social media reactions to the decisions announced Friday have followed predictable patterns. People ask, how can you be a Christian liberal arts institution if you’ve cut history, philosophy, and theology? How can you prepare students to be future leaders (my theme at the retreat) without journalism, social justice, or special ed? What is a liberal arts university that doesn’t do chemistry majors or information systems?

The newspaper explains the current strategic thinking:

According to Porterfield, the future of SPU’s offerings lie not in what students currently want, but what can entice future students.

“The programs have got to be programs for students that are not yet here,” Porterfield said. “We need non-traditional programs.”

The university’s long term strategy for growth is to cut down programs and gradually build them up over time.

I’ve heard this argument before. This isn’t a detraction from mission, the leaders say, because courses in history, philosophy, biology, chemistry, and journalism remain in the curriculum². Besides, they argue, the faith and critical thinking commitments of the university remain throughout all programs, even highly vocational ones.

This, they argue, is about reducing major programs to provide more flexibility to the university. These were programs with relatively small numbers of declared majors and it made good business sense to look at those. As I wrote two years ago, this does make business sense but I’m not sure it’s the best strategy for protecting institutional ethos.

What else is likely to come out of this process? Based on other institutions who’ve been down this road, it will lead to consolidation of programs in the social sciences (history and political science and sociology collapse into a single department with specializations rather than majors). Skill based components of areas in Math and English will be fine, but the math major might be in jeopardy and upper division lit classes will be few and far between. Philosophy will be downgraded to simply a series of courses with more focus placed on Bible and Theology that serve general education.

(I hate being right.)

If there are no majors in key areas, it becomes hard to retain and recruit faculty to teach in those areas. Doing only service courses is hard work. Faculty who have the freedom to be mobile will look for new opportunities. Others will jump out of academia all together. Faculty who have been in the institution long term but don’t have the option of either leaving or taking early retirement may just try to stick it out as best they can, but will find it hard to do their best work.³

The same cold logic used to “navigate tough times like other institutions are doing” can easily be applied to other programs as student interest changes. There will always be new areas of interest students ask admissions counselors about. By the time a new program is up and running, the interests have shifted again. Some other major will need to be sacrificed (due to low number of majors) to meet the then-new interest area.

One other reaction I had to the SPU news. Recently, Florida has determined that sociology courses shouldn’t count for general education regardless of how the course is structured. The need to go because it is presumed that their content is harmful (it isn’t!). At Christian universities, it appear that we won’t continue the programs regardless of the value of the content.

Recent political history, especially in Europe, has shown us the limitations of austerity budgets. It’s surprising to see institutions continue to ignore that lesson.

Christian higher ed doesn’t have a spending problem. It has an enrollment problem. The sooner it adjusts to resolve that situation, the healthier it will be.

Otherwise, it will continue making cuts, reducing retention, referrals, and outreach (new students and donors), damaging the reputation with its community and alumni, all while muddying its core mission. To what end?

1. I looked to see if either the Seattle papers or Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle had picked up the story yet but didn’t find anything, so I’ll use the student paper for now.

2. Note: President Porterfield was at my talk and said that we agree on much of the core of my argument while also disagreeing at points. My characterization of leadership is not meant to be anything SPU leadership has said but simply my rehearsing of arguments I’ve heard over the years.

3. I wish I had addressed this subgroup more directly in my book. It is one of the great scandals of Christian higher education. Given the teaching loads and limited support for scholarship, it doesn’t take long for a faculty member to only be employable at other Christian institutions. All the talk of mission fit and shared ministry falls by the wayside when options become limited.