Senate Bill No. 0304-18
UNIVERSITY SENATE
UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
Introduced by: Educational Policy Council & Graduate Academic Council
Date: April 19, 2004
PROPOSAL TO DISCONTINUE THE DOCTOR OF ARTS PROGRAM IN
HUMANISTIC STUDIES
IT IS HEREBY PROPOSED THAT THE FOLLOWING BE ADOPTED:
1. That the University Senate approve the attached proposal to discontinue the Doctor of
Arts program in Humanistic Studies as approved by the Educational Policy Council, the
Graduate Academic Council and the College of Arts & Sciences’ Faculty Council.
2. That this proposal be forwarded to the President for approval.
Doctor of Arts Program in Humanistic Studies 21 January 2004
The purpose of this document is to outline the rationale behind the recommendation to
deactivate the Doctor of Arts (DA) Program in Humanistic Studies at the University at
Albany, State University of New York. Once all of the students have exited (degree
awarded, withdrawal, or expiration of the statue of limitations) a final discontinuance of
the Program will be sought. Supporting documentation in the form of both quantitative
and qualitative data is included below and in the Appendices. While the College of Arts
and Sciences values all disciplines and recognizes that many graduates and current
students of this Program have benefited from its existence, various motivating factors that
are influenced by academic considerations, the current budgetary situation, and strategic
planning for the future indicate that the termination of this Program is warranted at this
time. Clearly, a primary impetus for this recommendation is the finding that the academic
goals and mission of the College of Arts and Sciences are not supported or enhanced by
its continuation.
All admissions to this Program have been suspended as of last spring. Discussions
concerning this step were held in February 2003 with the previous director of the DA
Program in Humanistic Studies, Mary Beth Winn, and subsequently with the Program’s
Advisory Board. On April 4, 2003, a memorandum was directed to the Chairs of the
Graduate Academic Council and the Council on Educational Policy indicating that the
College of Arts and Sciences was considering the deactivation of the Program. Similar
memos were sent to the Academic Programs Committee and the Academic Planning
Committees of the CAS Faculty Council on April 17, 2003 (memos attached, see
Appendix A). The Dean of the College later in April met with the Council on Educational
Policy to explain her decision. Graduate Admissions was instructed to suppress the
DAHS note from their relevant coding sheets thereby eliminating the possibility of future
enrollments into this Program.
The decision to suspend admissions and to seek deactivation is supported by the Provost
and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Carlos E. Santiago (letter appended, see
Appendix A). The deactivation is also a recommendation contained in the College’s
Strategic Plan, which was drafted by a 15-person committee last spring and summer,
reviewed by the Council of Chairs and CAS Faculty Council in the early fall, and
submitted to the Provost in November.
The comments that appear below address several areas of consideration related to the
move to deactivate and to discontinue this Program. These areas include the history of the
Program and the degree, academic issues regarding the relative standing of the degree,
past student history, and enrollment and financial considerations.
Program Background
In the late 1970s and early 80s, several PhD Programs at the University at Albany were
placed on probation or actually de-registered by the State Education Department (see
Appendix B). Particularly hard hit were the PhD Programs in the humanities, including
those in Classics, English, French, History, Philosophy, and Spanish. The DA Program in
Humanistic Studies at the University at Albany was introduced in the mid-1980s to
address the dearth of doctoral Programs that existed at this time in departments and units
that represented the humanities.
The DA degree itself, according to the website of the National Doctor of Arts Association
(http://www.isu.edu/departments/graduate/ndaa/index.html) was established in 1932 by
the Association of American universities as a pedagogically oriented doctoral Program,
but it was not until the late 1960s that the concept of a "cost-effective, non research,
three-year doctorate" caught on, according to Judith Glazer (A Teaching Doctorate? The
Doctor of Arts Degree, Then and Now, Washington, D.C.: American Association for
Higher Education, 1993). The degree was sanctioned by the Committee on Graduate
Studies of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities in 1970 and by
the council of Graduate Schools in the United States. The National Doctor of Arts
Association says that at the peak of popularity, the DA degree was offered in 44 fields of
study at a total of 31 institutions of higher learning. They further state: "In recent years,
some departments have chosen to terminate their Doctor of Arts Programs, most
frequently citing waning funds for graduate study, the decline in the academic job market
and the growing emphasis on pedagogy in traditional research oriented PhD Programs as
the cause."
In addition to some of the reasons stated above, the case for deactivating the DA Program
in Humanistic Studies at this time is also based upon the fact that the re-registration of
many of our PhD programs in the early 1990s has alleviated the need for the degree. In
fact, the PhD Programs in English, French, and History were re-registered in the early
90s and those in Philosophy and Spanish were removed from probation during that same
period. With the passing of time, moreover, and the trend to encourage more
interdisciplinary graduate work, the possibility of accommodating the interests of DA
students in existing MA Programs or PhD Programs greatly increased, thereby
eliminating to a large extent the original need that led to the creation of the DA Program
in Humanistic Studies Program. Indeed, a variety of degrees can be attained today at both
the masters and doctoral levels that were not possible when the DA Program was first
introduced.
Standing of the Program and the Degree
As mentioned above in our introduction, the decision to deactivate the DA Program in
Humanistic Studies was endorsed by the CAS Strategic Plan. That Plan articulated many
recommendations to guide the College over the next five years aimed at enhancing the
highly ranked programs of the College and moving to prominence other near-excellent
programs. Overall the Plan sought to improve the University's reputation as a major
research institution and help it place among the 30 top-rated public universities. It is felt
that both the DA Program itself and the relative standing of this degree in the larger
academic framework are not in line with current and future goals as articulated in the
Strategic Plan.
An internal Program review of all doctoral programs was conducted in 1997 at the
University at Albany, which placed programs in one of three categories. Of the 18
doctoral programs in CAS at that time, 3 were placed in category 1 (the highest rank), 12
were placed in category 2, 2 were placed in category 3, and the DA in Humanistic Studies
was placed low in Category 2, about to move to category 3 because of loss of
faculty.”The rationale stated within the committee’'sFinal Report cited the facts that new
PhD Programs in some areas removed the practical need for the DA degree, that some of
the more distinguished members of the Program had retired or were about to retire, and
that GRE scores and credentials of applicants were weak (see Appendix C). While no
new program reviews have been undertaken since that time, faculty resources for the DA
Program have not increased.
As stated earlier, the DA Degree even at its height of popularity was offered at only a
small number of institutions. Although some of these institutions are our peers or
aspirational peers, many of them, in fact a definite majority, are not. The degree does not
appear amongst those that the Carnegie Foundation uses to examine productivity or other
standard measures it publicizes with regards to institutions of higher learning, nor does it
appear to be nationally reviewed in a systematic fashion. In short, as the College works to
help the University improve its national ranking among public research institutions, it
must direct its attention towards programs that will positively impact its profile.
Many of the outside institutions that do offer this degree do so in very specialized
contexts to satisfy a particular educational market. For example:
Adelphi University - Communication Disorders
Ball State University - Music
University of Northern Colorado - Arts Administration & Music
Appendix D includes a listing, accurate and complete to the best of our knowledge, of
institutions and the degrees they offer as related to the Doctor of Arts. While there exists
no one complete listing or compendium of these institutions, the attached list was created
from searches of websites, communication with actual faculty members at distant
institutions, and listings provided by our own past Program director. Some of the
universities and colleges mentioned to have DA Programs were no longer listing them, an
indication of the national decline in offering the degree.
Past Student History
We have looked into the background of the students served by the DA Program in
Humanistic Studies and acknowledge that it has a served a useful function to these
students. A large proportion of the students receiving the DA degree had positions prior to
enrolling in the Program and sought the degree to enhance their existing credentials or
secure a raise or promotion in their jobs. In some cases, the degree was undertaken to
satisfy a personal goal or ambition. Some of these assertions come directly from letters
that were submitted to the College of Arts and Sciences from past graduates of this
Program (solicited by the former director of the Program and available upon request).
These facts help to explain the high proportion of part-time students in the Program.
According to the 1997 review of the Program (see Appendix C), the average time to
degree was 9.5 years.
An analysis of the institutions at which these students teach, as provided by the former
director of this Program, indicates that approximately 65% of past graduates are currently
employed at institutions that identify themselves as community colleges or other
institutions that do not require a research-based degree (e.g., Savannah College of Art &
Design; Hanover College; Rogers State College; J. Sergeant Reynolds Community
College).
Some of the students in the DA Program in Humanistic Studies already had MA degrees
from University at Albany or other institutions prior to enrollment in the Program,
although a prior graduate degree is not a prerequisite for admission. Others, according to
Chairs or graduate directors in various departments, had failed to be admitted to PhD
programs in the College or had dropped out of such programs. While we do not wish to
make much of such anecdotal evidence, we feel that our established programs can
accommodate the vast majority of qualified students wishing graduate degrees in all areas
of the humanities. A scan of the recent list of theses of DA students will reveal in most
cases an obvious connection with a particular discipline, and hence an intellectual home
for the student. Samples of thesis titles have included, “A Useful Citizen: Benjamin
Franklin as a Defender of the Glorious Publick [sic] Virtue,” “The Nature of Nature in the
Poetry of Hardy, Dickinson and Frost,” “Using the English Language, South African
Writers Fight Back Against Colonizers’ Writings and Philosophies,” and “Trade,
European Influence, and the Colonial Transformation in Ghana,” just to name a few.
Enrollment and Financial Considerations
According to institutional research figures provided by Bruce Szelest, Assistant Director,
Office of Institutional Research (see Appendix E), the Program has experienced a steady
decline in “Enrolled New-To-Program” figures over the past few years. In fact for fall
2002, only 5 students applied for admission; 3 were admitted, and 2 enrolled.
Nonetheless, the admission of students requires that certain courses be given to satisfy
core requirements, making the Program less cost-effective with dwindling enrollments.
The amount of tuition revenue that has been generated by this Program has experienced
some decline particularly over the past three years (exact figures provided by Wendell
Lorang, Institutional Research, University at Albany, can be found in Appendix E):
1999-2000: $116,040
2000-2001: $121,568
2001-2002: $113,723
2002-2003: $ 85,275
The costs that were involved in operating this program for the 2002-2003 academic year
included but may not be limited to the following:
$79,660 - stipends RE: Teaching Assistantships
$47,472 - total for tuition waivers
$10,000 - Targeted Fellowship (independent of Assistantship Allocation)
$29,868 - half-time secretarial position ($18,233) + 3 course releases for the program
director and two faculty members for the Program at a cost of $2,500 each + a budget
allocation of $4,135 for Program operations (Note that there are no faculty lines directly
within this Program.)
To summarize, the figures we might note for the most recent academic year, 2002-2003
are as follows:
APPROXIMATE REVENUE 2002-03: $ 85,275
APPROXIMATE TOTAL COST 2002-03: $167,000
Approximate Net Loss -$81,725
The above costs do not include the considerable faculty efforts that go into the Program,
and we argue that this is an important factor for consideration in a time of shrinking
human resources. It would be incorrect to conclude that faculty resources are not
involved in the administration and implementation of this Program simply because no
faculty lines per se are allocated to this Program. In fact many hours are devoted to this
Program in terms of independent study courses, advisement, examinations, service on
thesis committees, etc. In addition, the assistantship allocation to the DA Program could
be seen as competing with departmental faculty’s interests in qualitatively strengthening
PhD and professional masters programs, an increasingly sensitive issue in light of
declining resources for supporting graduate students.
As the College strives to move its PhD and MA Programs to their next level of excellence
and develop new graduate programs, we feel that faculty resources are best directed to
these goals and to research initiatives. The current direction of the humanities disciplines
suggest also that the boundaries of the traditional departments have become more
permeable and more receptive to the kinds of interdisciplinary work formerly associated
with the DA. We anticipate that students who were previously enrolled in this program
may be accommodated within other programs within the College of Arts and Sciences.
Final Summary and Conclusions
The Doctor of Arts Program in Humanistic Studies is not wholly without merit. It was
designed as an interdisciplinary non-research doctorate suitable for teaching careers or
jobs for which the major and minor are relevant and a research background is not
required. At the University at Albany, it was instituted at a time when a number of
doctoral programs were either placed on probation or deactivated altogether. Indeed, at
that point in time, it seemed to serve a specific niche that is no longer deemed necessary
in the current academic climate. It is not usually a competitive degree for positions
leading to tenure at research institutions. In addition, when reviewed in 1997, it bordered
the lowest possible category in terms of its overall merits. Nevertheless, the Program has
lead to the academic enrichment of many of its former graduates and current students and
has served to engage faculty and students across a broad range of disciplines. The
information reviewed above provides information regarding the academic efficacy and
merits of the current Program and the related financial impact of maintaining this
Program. As clearly outlined within this document, the Program’s costs as compared to
the amount generated through tuition revenue renders the Program ineffective in terms of
overall cost, both in terms of financial amounts and efforts and workload commanded
from faculty and administrative units to maintain all aspects of the Program. The
aforementioned information indicates that as a priority, the Program as it currently stands
does not meet the desired set of features that would render it a viable and productive one.
Therefore, the decision to deactivate and in turn discontinue this Program appears
warranted at this time.
