Update: Regents Formally Vote to Approve UNI Academic Cuts

An education and student affairs subcommittee of the Iowa Board of Regents has forwarded a plan to eliminate 58 programs and suspend eight more at University of Northern Iowa.

The Regents will meet later today where they appear primed to follow through with the recommendation. The academic cuts, along with plans to close Malcolm Price Laboratory School, have been met and protest from some faculty and students, and a national faculty organization will launch an .

The plan has been apparently in flux throughout the process and filled with as many questions as answers. For example, the university still can not say how much money they expect to save or how many jobs will be sacrificed.

But, UNI Provost Gloria Gibson said the fact that there are last minute changes shows the university is listening. For example, a bachelors degree in physics was removed from the elimination list and marked for restructuring at the last minute.

The university as a whole started the year with a $5 million deficit and cuts came throughout the university, not just academic, she said. Every vice president was forced to make cuts in their area, she said.

She defended the closures by saying cuts had to come from somewhere and they targeted programs with low enrollment and low graduation rates.

“When we look deeper at the number of students enrolled in program and the number of students graduating we had to take that into account,” Gibson said. “They are smaller programs and programs that have low graduation rates.”