Kansas University could stop offering physics and other less popular degree programs

Lawrence Journal-World : Physics is among 15 bachelor’s degree programs that graduate 10 or fewer students a year at the University of Kansas. As such, it could be eliminated if Kansas’s Republican governor-elect, Sam Brownback, follows the example of Missouri’s Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, who has urged Missouri’s universities and colleges to justify the continued existence of unpopular programs. Faced with that challenge, Kansas University’s dean of liberal arts and sciences has pointed out in an interview with the Lawrence Journal-World‘s Andy Hyland that the number of a program’s graduates does not correspond to the program’s importance to the university or the state:

Physics, for example, is one of the foundation sciences taught at a university, [Danny] Anderson said, and it shows how a department can house several different degree programs. The department at KU is called physics and astronomy, and it houses three of the listed small degree programs—physics, astronomy and engineering physics.