Starting next semester, students at North Carolina State University who wish to pursue the former Africana studies or women’s and gender studies majors will instead work toward a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, where the two old majors will now be concentration options.
While this is preferable to these courses of study being eliminated altogether, it is worrying that students dedicated to studying diversity will have less visibility and institutional distinction when more is clearly needed. The absorption of these two areas of study could very well discourage students from exploring them.
Jeff Braden, Dean of N.C. State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, told N.C. State’s student newspaper, The Technician, that consolidation was meant to shield the disciplines from the UNC Board of Governors, which recently shut down three academic centers across the system.
According to The Technician, additional factors prompted the decision, including low enrollments totaling only 44 graduates in Africana Studies over the past 8 years and the fact that the school’s only full-time professor in that department is moving toward retirement.
The implications of this decision, as well as its apparent motivation, are cause for concern. If system universities aren’t willing to fight for these types of programs out of fear of the Board of Governors, how many more centers and majors could be lost?
It would be prudent for other schools with similar programs to proactively consider solutions that will prevent further consolidations or even shutdowns.
