Centrality as a Prior Criterion [microform] / Yvonna S. Lincoln and Jane Tuttle

Program discontinuance at colleges and universities is often linked to issues of program demand and quality. However, neither low demand nor low quality is sufficient for program discontinuance without a judgment on the criterion of the centrality of the program to the institution's core mission. Colleges' retrenchment and survival mechanisms must: (1) be selected from a wide range of possibilities that include short-, medium-, and long-term tactics; and (2) be congruent with a reaffirmed or newly-revised mission. To use the demand and quality criteria to the exclusion of centrality is to misunderstand the nature of colleges and universities. The steps ought to be: (1) recommit or revise the institutional mission; (2) design a curriculum directly related to the mission; and (3) compare the present curriculum with the ideal. In addition to the fact that consideration of demand and quality issues alone may lead to programmatically debilitating decisions, restricting programs to one institution within a region will lead to inequality of opportunity. The cost of attending an institution farther from home will keep some lower-income students out of certain programs or out of postsecondary education altogether. (SW)