Education Policy, Business and Technology

When Faculty Lines Pay for Themselves

Inside Higher Ed: Faculty members often fear administrative efforts to “optimize” academic operations. That’s because some such efforts result in the elimination or shrinkage of programs deemed to be unsuccessful by key metrics, but worthwhile in harder-to-measure ones: the program with low numbers of majors but that delivers a large share of general education credits, for example, or that rounds out the liberal arts curriculum.

Sometimes, though, optimization efforts can actually help academic departments. Case in point: Stephen F. Austin State University, which used the services of Ad Astra Information Systems to close holes in its scheduling system -- and then used newfound funds from expected higher course enrollments to approve 19 additional full-time, non-tenure-track faculty lines.

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