Battling a $37.4 million projected total deficit this academic year, Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) Dean Barbara Crow sat down with The Journal to lay out the facts.
The deficit isn’t new, Crow explained. Driven by stunted revenue and growing operational costs, the faculty is facing a serious structural deficit of $13.8 million in 2024-25. Changes to curriculum and infrastructure are required to balance the faculty’s books.
In tandem with budget-driven changes, the FAS is rolling out its plan for 2025, which includes lowering requirements for majors and minors, changing course offerings, and investing in new learning experiences.
Resolving the structural deficit
Reduced international student enrollment, stagnant tuition, and insufficient government funding have depleted the FAS’ primary sources of revenue.
“We don’t have the revenue to deliver on our operations,” Crow said. “The work we’re doing is, how do we rethink what and how we do things within this fiscally constrained context.”
In 2019, the faculty noticed a downturn in international enrollment and put aside $10 million for a rainy day.
When COVID-19 swept the country, budget concerns were pushed aside to prioritize the transition to online learning. In 2020-21, the FAS reported a $5.5 million surplus which Crow attributes to deferred renovation projects and lower operational spending because of pandemic restrictions.
Since then, the FAS has been managing annual deficits.
Decisions about staff or faculty layoffs haven’t been made yet Crow said. The structural deficit is serious, and resolving it requires a “careful and measured approach” to inform decisions regarding faculty and staff.
“It’s hard to talk about that because this is personnel and HR related. This affects people’s lives. And we haven’t made decisions about that yet,” Crow said.
In a meeting in December, the FAS Budget Advisory Committee showed 30 department heads and school directors a model charting faculty to staff ratios onto six years of budgets. The purpose was to illustrate the difficult choices ahead given the inverse relationship between minimizing layoffs for faculty and staff.
“When there are changes in one category, it influences the need for changes in the other,” Crow said.
The FAS employs 466 tenured or tenured-track faculty members, 75 continuing adjuncts, and 348 staff members.
“It’s a very difficult time,” Crow said. “I recognize and understand how difficult this is for our students, our staff, our faculty, and our community. We are working together to come out stronger on the other side, and we will—because we’re the Faculty of Arts and Science.”
This group oversees actions taken to mitigate budget cuts and facilitates regular discussions to understand the evolving situation.
Proposed changes to degree structure
Students in the class of 2028 will need four less classes—or 12 less credits—in one subject to meet their major requirements if all goes as planned. Of the 120 credits required for honours degrees, requirements for Bachelor of Arts majors would drop from 60 credits to 48 credits, and requirements for Bachelor of Science majors would fall from 72 credits to 60 credits.
The plan proposes reducing the requirements for a minor by six credits, the equivalent of two classes. What is currently called a major would become a specialization. Crow clarified the changes won’t impact students’ ability to meet criteria for graduate programs.
“The main thrust of the initiative is to make sure our students are getting the degree that’s with the right name,” FAS Associate Dean Jenn Stephenson said in an interview with The Journal.
Crow said the new degree structure aligns with other Ontario universities such as University of Ottawa, with majors requiring a minimum of 42 credits. Lowering the number of credits will give students more flexibility in their coursework, and more timetable space for elective classes.
Stephenson said the proposed degree changes pre-date the budget deficit and have helped the FAS office think strategically about what really belongs in the major. Decisions involving mandatory courses under the new degree structure will be made in consultation with individual departments.
Changes to course offerings
The FAS is moving ahead with cutting undergraduate classes with less than ten students enrolled, but small classes—a hallmark of Queen’s education—are here to stay.
A quarter of classes in the FAS have enrollments between 11 and 24 students, and more than half have class sizes of less than 50. The cuts won’t apply to thesis projects or directed reading courses, where students work one-on-one with faculty to explore specific research interests.
“[The cuts affect] 800 seats on a denominator of 158,000 seats. We offer 158,000 seats in the Faculty of Arts and Science every year—it’s small,” Stephenson said.
Program admission suspensions to Liberal Studies, German Studies majors, and the Fine Arts program all happened for different reasons and in consultation with the appropriate academic units, Crow said. The Fine Arts program will be coming back to Queen’s, and Crow confirmed both arts and science are priorities
“The humanities are critical and fundamental. We can’t have a Faculty of Arts and Science without the humanities,” Crow said.
There’s cool stuff going on in the FAS, Crow said. The faculty is exploring new methods of teaching for students, bridging disciplines and challenging students to apply their learning with hands-on projects.
One course, which will be piloted in the psychology department, focuses on wellness, and was developed by students. With less pressure on students’ timetables to meet their major requirements, students can participate in more unique opportunities, Crow said.
Under development is an alternative capstone pathway for upper-year students.
“The idea is a student in any major can do this fourth-year capstone experience—high quality, rigorous, interdisciplinary, instead of a one-on-one thesis,” Stephenson said.
Tags
Arts and science, Asus, Barbara Crow, budget cuts, FAS
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James McDonald
There are 466 tenured or tenured tracked faculty members.
I can’t imagine how FAS is so deep in the hole?
Come on.
An art history alum
Cutting the requirements for a major is a huge mistake and students should demand a explanation for what is driving the dilution of their degrees. It is expected that anyone holding a BAH has a well-rounded and comprehensive knowledge (at a bachelor’s level) of their field. I thought the opinion piece published in this paper last year argued for studying only what interests you in an English degree (because the Romantic period just didn’t turn the author’s crank I guess) was included for levity. But for goodness sake, that’s the kind of attitude that an education is supposed to help you grow out of! In every field, there are areas of study foundational to development of a complete mastery of that field – to understanding its context and unsettled controversies. Few of us enjoy every class or topic, but immersion in what does animate our intellects and inspire our souls is what graduate school (if rigorous inquiry is your thing) and personal reading (if you simply seek the pleasure of learning) are for. Dropping requirements will result a loss of breadth or depth or both. An honours degree from Queen’s will lose its value, and a 3 course minor is just just a passing interest not a degree. Oh Queen’s, wtf are you doing?