Just days before early registration begins, some students have received emails from their academic advisers and departments about the university cutting some courses offered in the fall.
The eliminations were made by the deans of all five undergraduate colleges, under the direction of Walter Zakahi, Bradley’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. He told deans to prepare for a 20 percent decline in student enrollment next semester.
A faculty member in the world languages department sent out an email to the students in the department on April 12 about the courses that are being eliminated “for the foreseeable future.”
“The news were [sic] very sudden, even for me,” the faculty member said in the email. “And I would have told you in-person and in-advance if I had not learn [sic] the information for myself in the past days.”
According to university spokesperson Renee Charles, the deans focused on reducing the number of seats per course section first, as opposed to the sections themselves. If there are multiple sections for an elective course, those were reduced.
“Due to COVID-19, Bradley, like every other institution in the country, is preparing for a decline in enrollment this fall,” Charles said. “We don’t know precisely what that decline will be, so we have been participating in scenario planning.”
According to the course schedule published on the university’s website, there are now 1,880 on-campus sections offered for the fall of 2020, in comparison to 2,006 sections in fall of 2019, and 2,012 sections in fall of 2018.
With the majority of departments having reduced the sections that will be offered in fall, courses coded under the “education, counseling and leadership” (ENC), “sociology” (SOC) and “geological science” (GES) have significant reductions in the number of sections offered in fall in comparison to fall of 2019. World language classes have seen a categorical elimination in Arabic and Chinese.
Some course eliminations were influenced by the university’s reductions in adjunct faculty and not filling positions resulting from resignations or retirements. As a result, full-time faculty will be required to teach four courses instead of three, eliminating research periods, according to an email sent to staff on April 15.
“They are focused on electives, and if there are multiple sections, those are reduced first,” Charles said. “They also looked at enrollments of the past few years for all electives and minors, those with lower enrollments or declining trends are the ones that were reduced or cut first.”
The courses were eliminated Monday afternoon, three days before early registration began. As a result, several academic advisers reached out to students about possibly restructuring their planned schedules. According to Charles, each dean’s office is working to ensure it won’t impact students’ graduation. The university is currently working on contingency plans for courses, including putting sections on reserve depending on enrollment numbers.
An earlier version of this article stated that courses coded under the “academic explore program” (AEP) have seen some cuts, which was unclear. While AEP courses have reduced the number of sections it offers in comparison to the fall of 2019, no class was eliminated. The article has been updated on April 17 to reflect the clarification.
