Acting NIU Provost J. Carroll Moody said a hit list of programs which may be eliminated is contained in a report he received earlier this week from all college deans.

The report is the result of the Illinois Board of Higher Education’s Priority, Quality and Productivity guidelines which were developed to evaluate academic programs. The guidelines have caused a wave of uneasiness among academics who fear state higher education is going to the guillotine.

Moody said the deans applied the guidelines to their programs and came up with a tentative report which he will discuss at the next Council of the Deans meeting.

Moody said some programs on the list will be cut or scaled back, but he emphasized that the process is still in the preliminary stage. NIU will meet with the IBHE staff Oct. 1 to discuss its hit list.

The IBHE is evaluating programs based on the guidelines and comparing the quantitative results to programs at other state schools.

Moody said he finds this troubling because the different universities have different missions and serve different regions with different needs.

He said the quality and service aspect of a program must be taken into effect as well as its quantitative results.

Moody said the deans had to evaluate NIU programs the way the IBHE is evaluating them. However, he said programs were also evaluated on the basis of NIU values.

“A program which survives the IBHE measures might still be cut or scaled back. And likewise a program which appears to be vulnerable under the guidelines might not be affected,” Moody said.

James Norris, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said the process will take choices away from students.

“What the IBHE is saying to students is that if you’re wealthy enough to go to a private school, you can have your choice of majors,” Norris said.

He said with the elimination of programs, students at state schools won’t have that choice. As an example, he said students at NIU might find themselves having to transfer to Western Illinois University to enroll in a particular program.

“Some of our students work, especially in our region with its opportunities, and they can’t move to Western,” Norris said.

Other critics have expressed fears that state higher education will become a trade school arrangement, with engineers going to one school, medical doctors to another, and so on.

He said cuts do have to be made, but “what (the IBHE) is talking about is the disassembling of an educational program which is the envy of the world.”

“There is an intellectual integrity which can easily be destroyed by mindless cuts and consolidation,” Norris said.

Norris said the IBHE doesn’t understand that state students also go to universities to learn to think and to simply learn.