NIU deans and chairs reacted Monday to an Illinois Board of Higher Education hit list which could spell doom for many academic programs.

The hit list is part of the IBHE’s Priorities, Quality and Productivity (PQP) initiative. PQP is designed to streamline public higher education in Illinois by eliminating and consolidating program offerings.

An IBHE staff report released Monday shows that 15 programs are recommended for elimination at NIU including the College of Law and the doctorate in psychology.

College of Law Dean James Alfini said statistics used by the IBHE staff to justify its recommendation have been selective.

In justifying the elimination of the law school, the report states there will be an oversupply of lawyers.

However, one IBHE report stated undersupply of lawyers seems forthcoming.

Quoting a United States Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook the report states, “Employment of lawyers has grown very rapidly since the early 1970s and is expected to continue to grow faster than the average occupations through the year 2005.”

Alfini said, “The IBHE totally disregards this information by essentially talking to two people on the street.”

The IBHE justified the “lack of jobs” assertion by interviewing John DeMoss, director of the Illinois Bar Association and Susan Skiles, a reporter for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.

Alfini also criticized the recommendation on the basis of accessibility. NIU is the only public law school in its region, with the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University servicing the rest of the state.

“The IBHE is saying if you’re a poor person in Chicago and you want to go to law school then you’ll have to pay $15,000 and go to a private institution,” Alfini said.

Of the three public law schools, NIU is the most cost-effective. It costs the state $207 per credit hour to run NIU’s law school. U of I and SIU cost the state $227 and $337 per credit hour respectively, Alfini said.

“I believe we will win this one on our merits. Presently we are preparing a detailed response to the IBHE,” Alfini said.

Frederick Schwantes, chair of the psychology department, said the data he has seen to evaluate the doctorate in psychology program was gathered in 1976-1978 and published in 1982.

Schwantes said not only is the information dated, but that he has a different interpretation of the data.

The IBHE states that in the mid 1980s, a study rated the program in the third, fourth, and fifth tenths of program quality, effectiveness and improvement, respectively. Out of 150 schools, the NIU program ranked in the middle at 75.

However, the study was done with the top 150 programs in the nation, and there are over 300 total programs in the country. Therefore, NIU’s program actually ranked in the top 25 percent of the programs in the nation.

“The data shows that we have a fairly good program. And since that report our reputation hasn’t slipped a bit,” Schwantes said.