LAPS dean adheres to concerns from students regarding BAS degree

Concerned students spoke to the dean of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies last week about wanting to change the name of the Bachelor of Administrative Studies degree to a Bachelor of Commerce.
The BAS is a business program part of the School of Administrative Studies. However, many students find that the “BAS” name does not appropriately represent the business program, therefore they desire a name change to BCom, which they believe is more fitting. A major issue brought up by supporters of the petition is that the current name of the program is confusing and is not recognizable to employers.
The School of Administrative Studies is preparing a proposal to be brought forward to relevant committees and the LAPS faculty council. If the proposal is approved, it will be brought to Senate.
Enrolment in the faculty of LAPS is in freefall as the faculty struggles with unmet enrolment targets and teething problems in the transition to the SHARP budget model.
LAPS dean Ananya Mukherjee-Reed informed council that LAPS is lagging 55 fiscal full-time equivalents below the 19,907 target, while overall enrolment has declined by over 800 students from the fall 2014 to the fall 2015 semester.
According to documents made available on York’s website, the dean said the SHARP budget model is driven by undergraduate fiscal full-time equivalents.
Major FFTEs represent those students who are majoring in a program within LAPS who are taking a full course load.
These include major FFTEs, non-major FFTEs and students from other faculties.
“In my Faculty Council presentation,” says Mukherjee-Reed, “I was referring to the overall FFTEs, which, as of that day was 55 short of the target set for LA&PS for 2015-16 (19,907).”
These numbers are updated daily.
Although international students have been a lone spot of brightness for York’s enrolment, lower numbers are reported for both domestic and international students.
The latest slump follows a trend of declining LAPS enrolment, which has fallen since 2011.
LAPS is responding to unfavourable developments by attempting to address students’ concerns.
“This is why we have put the B.Com degree name change project as a top priority,” says Mukherjee-Reed.
“My approach to enrollment is not only to bring in new students, but to give our current students the best possible educational experience – so that they become our ambassadors,” she adds.
Improved student retention was considered as one possible strategy to address plunging enrolment, with LAPS tasked with drafting a three-year budgetary plan.
Mukherjee-Reed also spoke of York’s vaunted Markham campus, which has attracted controversy for the way in which courses and faculties are to be divided between Keele and Markham, which remains unclear.
She says current plans include offering programs at Markham that have unmet demand at Keele or those which are not available at Keele.
York’s planning documents note that the provost is working with deans to identify a list of programs to be offered at Markham.
York says the new campus will help the university capitalize on projected population growth after 2020.
Options under consideration include either a satellite site or a stand-alone operation. It was also noted that there is going to be traffic between Keele and Markham campuses, although students will be able to complete degrees independently at either location.
Construction in Markham is expected to begin in 2018 with a proposed opening date of 2020.
Although York continues to draft new budgets, the costs of the new campus are beyond current planning horizons and are left for later years.
Previously, president Mamdouh Shoukri noted that the Markham campus is intended to diversify York’s academic programs and boost growth.
Critics bring up York’s origins as a liberal arts university to criticize the move to broad-based academic programming.
Shoukri points out York has always been a broad-based university and it was merely an accident that York established an engineering school just recently.
With files from Ryan Moore