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Academic Bloat?

Byuclafaculty

From today’s San Francisco Chronicle:

It sounds like an obesity epidemic in higher education: program bloat.  …The phrase refers to the hundreds of degree programs at California’s public universities with fewer than 10 graduates in a given year … A new study out Sunday from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni calls on the universities to eliminate low-enrollment programs or offer them jointly across campuses or online for efficiency…
 
Last year, the University of California had 792 programs with fewer than 10 students receiving a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree, according to the report… For example, five of UC’s 10 campuses graduated a total of 14 undergraduates in “geophysics and seismology” last year. At UC Berkeley, six students got a master’s in anthropology. Four got a master’s in German studies…

Full article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/10/BACO1OV4HS.DTL
The ACTA has a general advisory report for all universities warning against “curriculum creep” at http://www.goacta.org/publications/downloads/AcademicPriorities.pdf
The specific report to which the article above refers is titled “Best Laid Plans: The Unfulfilled Promise of Public Higher Education in California.”  Although the article says this report is on the ACTA website, yours truly could not find it there using the ACTA search option.  A Google search also failed to find it.  There is a link in the Chronicle article to U.S. data on programs and majors by university.  For example, UCLA’s info is at http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=CA&l=5&ct=1&ic=1&pg=2&id=110662#programs
Anyway, there must be a remedy for bloat:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXPU6BraEmE&w=320&h=195]

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