Teach-Outs for Closing Programs and Institutions
Patricia E. Salkin, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Touro University

Lately, a week hardly goes by without news of another institution announcing plans to close programs or departments, and even entire colleges and universities planning to shut down.  According to University Business, in the last four years, more than 50 public and private nonprofit colleges have either announced plans to close, have closed, or have merged with another institution. Higher Ed Dive has been tracking the number of major colleges that have closed, merged or consolidated since 2016, providing an easy-to-use map showing that Massachusetts and New York lost ten schools each (with New York losing another one this week), followed by nine in Illinois and seven in California.   U.S. News and World Report reported that between July 2004 and June 2020 close to 12,000 college campuses closed. On a smaller scale, it is unknown precisely how many schools and majors within institutions are closed due to financial challenges and low enrollments. 

For provosts/chief academic officers, the elimination of programs and the closure of a college brings added responsibilities to ensure the orderly teach-out for enrolled students so that they may achieve the degree they signed up for with as little disruption as possible.  Staying student-focused is key during this time, however, it is also important to remember the impacts on faculty and staff who will understandably be concerned about their futures as well. What follows is a checklist of items to consider for provosts who are faced with teach-outs once the decision is made to close the program or school.

On 21 February 2023, ACAO hosted a panel discussion on Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) and its potential uses (or abuses) in higher education. The goal of the panel was twofold: (1) to introduce provosts and other attendees to ChatGPT (developed by OpenAI) and similar AI language models and technologies; and (2) to discuss the opportunities and challenges of this new technology on our working, teaching, and learning environments.

Three speakers addressed attendees. First, Dr. Jing Peng from Montclair State University provided a high-level presentation on AI chatbot technology and its evolution over time. Dr. Peng’s presentation highlighted the fact that this technology is not “new,” per se, with roots that extend back decades – but its development is accelerating exponentially as it becomes “smarter” given the vast amount of data that are now available for its refinement and evolution.

ACAO has several events for Provosts to attend while at ACE in DC this April.  If you're a provost, you won't want to miss us!

April 13th 5-7pm ACAO Provost Reception @ The City Tap House, 901 9th St NW

April 14th 7:30-9:00am ACAO Members Business Meeting, Marriott Marquis Room: Capital M4

April 14th 10:15-11:00am At the Pleasure of the President, Marriott Marquis Room: Marquis Ballroom 12-13M2

It is both expensive and time-consuming on many levels to launch a national search for every academic leadership position on campus.  Sometimes, of course, a national search is warranted for a Dean or for a Provost, but for other positions, such as department chairs, program directors, assistant and associate deans and associate/provosts, having a trained and ready “back bench” may be the best solution to maintain desired progress and efficiencies.  Admittedly, there are reasons to desire external candidates when changes and fresh perspectives are desired, but that is not always the case.  More often than not, leadership laments that there are no internal candidates ready to move up.

When colleges and universities want to retain their best, most creative, ambitious, and competent faculty and academic administrators, it is important for these people to sense a career path if they stay at the institution, and it is important to invest in their professional development so that they feel valued. With these two complementary goals in mind, the Touro College Academy of Leadership and Management (TCALM) was implemented five years ago in 2018.