SAN ANTONIO – Nearly a month after Our Lady of the Lake University told students it would be cutting some degree programs, the school still refuses to say exactly which programs or how many faculty and students would be affected.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Alan Silva told students in a Feb. 7 email that OLLU was “undergoing a comprehensive student-focused realignment” that would include “discontinuing and modifying some academic programs, and eliminating some positions.”
The private university says current students will still be able to complete their degrees in the discontinued programs. However, a doctoral student in a discontinued program told KSAT that the details of how that would work are still unclear.
According to an FAQ page on the school’s website, a drop in enrollment has led to budget deficits, and some degree programs aren’t bringing in enough students to be economically viable.
The website does not specify which programs are being combined or cut entirely. On the other hand, it lists biology, psychology, social work, criminology and kinesiology as examples of programs that are growing.
The university did not provide any details when KSAT first asked about the cuts in February, and it once again avoided answering specific questions on Monday.
In an unsigned message from a generic provost office email address, the school did not answer KSAT’s questions about which programs were being cut or how many faculty members and students were affected.
Instead, the school emphasized the unidentified programs were largely ones that weren’t attracting students and claimed that privacy concerns kept the school from disclosing even the number of people affected.
The bulk of the degree plans we are discontinuing at OLLU are those with little to no interest from incoming students. Although we must discontinue programs that are underperforming, we will not be eliminating all of the courses from those programs. Students will continue to benefit from a broad-based, liberal arts education, with courses from across the disciplines.
We have communicated with every single student in an impacted program about the steps we are taking for them to complete their courses and graduate with a degree from OLLU. OLLU is fully committed to the success of its students and we encourage any student who still has questions to reach out.
We have had conversations with faculty directly impacted and, out of respect for their privacy, we are not sharing information on the number of individuals involved. We deeply appreciate the contributions of all our employees and are focused on supporting everyone during this transition.
Discussions on this realignment have been ongoing for some time, and we have consistently communicated the need to take action. We will continue to support our students, faculty, and staff through the realignment process
OLLU Provost Office
Lorie Hidalgo, a fourth-year doctoral student in OLLU’s leadership studies program, had been on track to graduate this year from OLLU. However, she’s unsure what’s next for her after she says the school “blindsided” her and her classmates.
Silva emailed Hidalgo and the other leadership doctoral program students on Feb. 18 to tell them the school would no longer accept new students for the program, beginning with the fall 2025 semester.
The email promised additional information on scheduled classes, and mentoring would come in “the next few weeks,” though Hidalgo said that still hasn’t arrived.
She sent a list of follow-up questions to Silva on Feb. 26 on behalf of her cohort but was mostly unsatisfied with the answers.
The current faculty in the program will be gone after May, she said, leaving her uncertain about how the rest of her courses and dissertation will proceed.
“They don’t have any information on who is going to be teaching these courses moving forward, who is going to be working alongside me on, you know, collecting my data, helping me to analyze my data and finish my dissertation,” she said.
Hidalgo said she had heard of over a dozen other programs being closed, but KSAT has not yet independently verified the specifics.
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