FORT VALLEY, Ga. — The Board of Regents has discontinued more than 200 low-enrollment degree programs in Georgia universities, including some right here in Central Georgia.
Bachelor of Arts degrees in English, economics, and Master of Arts degrees in teaching history all made the list of discontinued programs at Fort Valley State University, but its provost says it is only making room for better.
18 of Georgia's public universities will offer fewer degrees due to low enrollment in those programs.
Over in Wildcat, territory several programs landed on the state's list for deactivation.
"It’s a way of pausing those programs to see whether we could re-envision them, structure them or whether we really want to do away with them," Olufunke Fontenot said.
The university's provost and VP of academic affairs says the Board of Regents terminated those majors last week.
"Curriculums have to continue to evolve. We're responding to the workforce need. What we're teaching to those students, we're preparing them for the workforce and to become productive citizens," she said.
Indicators for low enrollment at Fort Valley are enrollment and graduation numbers. There must be an average of 15 students enrolled in the program within 3 years and an average graduation rate of 10. Though seven degree programs got the axe, Fontenot says it gives other high demand programs a chance to shine.
"Our goal is to see the programs that are not doing well and see how we can redirect the resources to possibly new programs that are in demand, and we've done quite a bit of that,” Fontenot said.
Fort Valley says they're preparing to pour those resources from those chopped programs into their returning nursing program and newly approved masters in social work.
43 degrees were terminated from University of Georgia, 28 from Georgia State University and 32 from Georgia Southern University.