The University of Alaska system is continuing its drive to consolidate instruction and administration as part of a cost-cutting drive, the Juneau Chamber of Commerce was told at its weekly luncheon.<\/p>\n
The week\u2019s featured speaker was University of Alaska Southeast chancellor Rick Caulfield, who said at the Juneau Moose Lodge that the university is \u201clooking at all of our academic programs and all of our administrative programs,\u201d no different \u201cfrom any other part of state government.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Alaska facing severe budget problems because of low oil prices, government services are being cut across the board.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout half our budget, about $25 million, comes from state general funds,\u201d Caulfield said, adding that proportion is high by American standards.<\/p>\n
For its part, the university system has embarked on what it calls \u201cStrategic Pathways,\u201d a program of cuts and consolidation.<\/p>\n
Under the plan, each part of the university system \u2014 Southeast, Anchorage and Fairbanks \u2014 will become a specialist in a few particular fields.<\/p>\n
For UAS, that might include teacher training, fisheries and ocean sciences, or Alaska Native studies and Northwest Coast art.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are convinced that we can grow the number of Southeast Alaska students who are enrolled in … a fisheries degree program,\u201d Caulfield said.<\/p>\n
In the spring, UAS plans to ask the university system\u2019s board of regents for permission to specialize in that area. Strategic Pathways as a whole is expected to be rolled out during 2017 and 2018.<\/p>\n
In response to a question from Bruce Abel, Caulfield said UAS has a 57 percent graduation rate for \u201cfirst-time, full-time graduates,\u201d and he admits that is \u201clower than what you\u2019ll see in most numbers,\u201d but UAS also functions as a community college and has large numbers of nontraditional students \u2014 people who also work full-time, are raising families, or take longer than four years to get a degree.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that the idea of just going off to college at 18 and finishing in four years … here, it\u2019s a lot less common,\u201d Caulfield said. \u201cI always caution about trying to do too direct a comparison.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The University of Alaska system is continuing its drive to consolidate instruction and administration as part of a cost-cutting drive, the Juneau Chamber of Commerce was told at its weekly luncheon. The week\u2019s featured speaker was University of Alaska Southeast chancellor Rick Caulfield, who said at the Juneau Moose Lodge that the university is \u201clooking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":3925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3924"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}