photo by: Chris Conde

A partially frozen Potter Lake pictured here on Jan. 19, 2022, at the University of Kansas.

The Kansas Board of Regents is ready to review whether public universities across the state are unnecessarily duplicating some programs and degrees.

Regents at their meeting on Wednesday unanimously agreed to hire rpk Group, a business and education consulting firm, to collect data and study the state’s university system from an efficiency standpoint.

But Regents also cautioned the consultants to keep the needs of specific regions of the state in mind when they are doing their analysis.

“We need to focus on unnecessary duplication versus appropriate duplication,” Regent Wint Winter told the group. “We need duplication in degree programs like nursing and teaching.”

In other words, Regents said the goal of the study won’t be to ensure that no two universities are offering the same degree programs. Rather, the study will look at whether the number of degree programs is matching up well with the demand.

Regents gave staff members the authority to negotiate a contract with rpk Group, but details on the cost of the study weren’t immediately available and weren’t discussed by the board.

Both the University of Kansas and Pittsburg State University already have used rpk Group to evaluate degree programs at those two schools. The report for the Regents will look at some of those same issues from a statewide perspective. Regents also asked the group to study the workload that faculty members are being asked to carry during the course of a school year.

That portion of the study would look at items such as: the number of full-time faculty members per department or discipline; total student credit hours taught for each department or discipline; and average class sizes for each department or discipline.

In other news, the Regents:

Approved the appointment of KU economist Donna Ginther as the university’s Regents Distinguished Professor. Since 1967, KU’s sole Regents Distinguished Professorship has been in the field of medicinal chemistry, KU Chancellor Douglas Girod told the Regents.

Girod said after KU’s last Regents Distinguished Professor, Blake Peterson, left the university, university leaders decided to shift the distinguished professorship to the area of economics. Girod said he supported the shift because it fits well with KU’s growing emphasis on being a catalyst for economic development in the state.

Ginther, who leads KU’s Institute for Policy & Social Research, conducts a variety of research in scientific labor markets, gender differences in employment outcomes, wage inequality and other issues.

By being a Regents Distinguished Professor, Ginther will be eligible for special state funding support. In the last academic year, the Legislature approved $21,000 in funding support for each Regents Distinguished Professor in the state.