300 Arts seats were cut—now a Senate report reveals what that decision is costing, and who stands to gain.
The Senate Committee on Academic Development and Procedures (SCADP) has released a report detailing the effects of an April 2025 decision to shift 300 enrolment seats from programs in the Bachelor of Arts (BA) into other degree plans for the 2026-27 academic year. The request for this report was approved by Senate in May 2025 following broader concerns about the future of the BA and the University’s enrolment priorities.
READ MORE: Senate calls for analysis on impacts of Arts seat reallocation
The report details that 100 seats were reallocated within the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS), with 50 moving to Computing, 25 shifting to Life Sciences, and 25 being reallocated to Kinesiology. The remaining 200 seats were shifted outside of the FAS, with 75 being reallocated to Smith Business, 75 moving to Smith Engineering, and 50 being shifted to Health Sciences.
The deans of the receiving faculties all offered reports detailing the changes they’re making to support these shifts. Smith Business explained that they’ll be creating a new cohort and hiring new faculty to accommodate this increase in seats. Still, space-based constraints may require the faculty to make changes that could reduce elective choice and scheduling flexibility, and limit flexibility for international exchange and transfer students.
The other faculties proposed solutions that include changes to curriculum and delivery, and different timetabling and teaching space strategies. Some are also considering making staffing and workload adjustments in teaching and student support roles, and implementing operational changes intended to sustain advising, accommodations, and assessment.
Associate Professor Dan Cohen, who moved the initial motion calling for this report in May 2025, expressed his confusion in an interview with The Journal about how the proposed changes align with the initial goals of the enrolment shift.
“If you go back, the reason [for these shifts in enrolment] was all financial, that they needed to switch enrollments to take advantage of higher tuition-paying programs,” Cohen said. “Now they’re hiring in relationship to how many more students are coming into these other programs. Where is the financial cost-benefit analysis in that? Are any increases in tuition being offset by the fact that now they’re going to hire in Commerce and Engineering?”
Cohen also expressed his disappointment regarding a lack of information in the report on how the University would be helping to mitigate the issues arising from these increases in enrolment.
“We asked specific questions about cross-faculty revenue splits, interdisciplinary programs, increase in breadth requirements, this sort of thing,” Cohen said. “And that just wasn’t answered, because it was only the faculties responding, and not the administration at all, from what SCADP provided.”
In a written statement to The Journal, Chair of the SCADP, Gavan Watson, claimed that “the Senate motion didn’t request a separate University-administration mitigation report, and no such material was provided to SCADP or omitted from the report.”
The report also discussed other potential changes for the FAS, including redesigning courses and curriculums to encourage more course sharing across departments, redesigning first and second-year programs into a cohort model, and suspending plans “assessed as non-viable” under projected enrolment distributions.
Cohen expressed his concerns with this potential suspension of programs and the emphasis that has put on enrolment levels and instructional capacity when determining suspensions.
“If you incentivize retirements, you don’t replace people, and then you cut the level of enrollment in the BA by transferring people out, then […] you’ve set up a situation where plans automatically don’t become viable in one specific part of the University,” he said. “That’s not based on student demand, […] but based on these two administrative decisions.”
The report is intended to inform discussion of the effects of the Senate-approved enrolment reallocation for 2026-27 and beyond.
Tags
Enrolment, SCADP, Seat changes, Senate
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