The limited budget facing the university may affect the Core Curriculum, a program required for a majority of the university’s freshmen.
At his fall address to the University of Idaho, Interim President Steven Daley-Laursen stated his intention to “continue to assess the program and our general education curriculum and code curriculum, ensuring that our students are engaged in a transformational experience of discovery, understanding and global citizenship.”

Yet these are sectors of UI that are particularly worried about the tightening budgets, even after last year’s simplification of the general education program.
“We’re not forgotten,” Core Curriculum Director Jean Henscheid said. “But every year, the same question comes up. How are we going to fund both individual majors and general education?”

She said funding for general education is especially problematic because the school’s operating budget is primarily split among the deans of the various colleges. Each dean is then asked to give a certain amount of that to the general education program.
“This happens everywhere,” Henscheid said. “And a dean’s first priority is their respective majors.” 
The strategic plan behind the core curriculum is to make transition to higher education as easy as possible.

Thus, Henscheid prefers class sizes to be small and taught by the best professors from multidisciplinary fields. The budget for this year is set but there’s a lot of talk about what will happen next year.
“My impression is that the president and provost will convene to decide their priority – what is sustainable and what we promised our students,” Henscheid said.

She said the university promises students a positive transformational experience, an 18-to-1 student-teacher ratio and a liberal education.
“Financial difficulties come when you do things different from the norm,” Henscheid said.
At other universities, big lecture first-year classes are the norm. UI prides itself on the small class sizes, good faculty and additional learning experiences such as guest speakers, she said. UI is committed to providing a wide variety of academic and co-curricular experiences to prepare students for what lies ahead, she said.

Within Daley-Laursen’s address, he applauded the collaborative work by faculty and staff, shared his vision to move forward, meanwhile noting the changing global and local economies may lead institutions to become “reactionary in budgeting and financial management.”

To a near-capacity audience, Daley-Laursen identified three goals for UI, the first of which was guaranteeing a transformational experience for its students.
 “I want to acknowledge the recent revamping of the Core Curriculum at the UI,” he said. “The current versions of the core discovery course are well accepted by our students and are helping them engage with the material and peers in a meaningful way.”

Current classes have 35 students per class, but this year with budgets getting tighter, “maybe we can’t afford small classes anymore,” Henscheid said.
Current Core Discovery classes are taught by professors from multidisciplinary fields who teach outside their college. In an effort to decrease the cost, professors might be replaced with graduate students.
“Whatever we talk about and whatever we decide that we can afford, everyone here agrees that student learning is the most important thing,” Henscheid said.

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