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Universities Grappling with Budget Cuts

By Jesse Wood


asu logoAug. 22, 2013. Carolina Public Press, the state’s first online nonprofit news organization “devoted to original, enterprise-level, investigative journalism in the public interest,” is publishing a series of articles about universities in Western North Carolinagrappling with five years of state budget cuts.

The third-part of the series features Appalachian State University. Here is an excerpt:

By Paul Clark

Low enrollment and ongoing state budget cuts have prompted Appalachian State University to discontinue some majors either by dropping them or consolidating them with other programs.

The changes are meant to make ASU operate more efficiently to adjust to the $34 million in reductionsin state funding the university has been hit with since 2008.

“We all want to do the right thing — serve the region while being responsible stewards of the resources we receive from the state,” Edelma Huntley, dean of ASU’s Cratis D. Williams Graduate School, said in a recent email. “Our program prioritization process will enable us to determine where potential growth is while also making difficult decisions about eliminating programs that have lost demand.”

At the undergraduate level, the statistics major is being eliminated this fall but will be available as a concentration in mathematics. Majors in theater arts education (kindergarten through high school), and in French and Francophone studies, are being combined with other programs on campus.

Click here to read more.