106 ORGANIZING ACADEMIC COLLEGES: A GUIDE FOR DEANS Under this budget model, splitting the liberal arts college has the potential to encourage colleges to offer large sections of relatively unchallenging course work or to encourage the hiring of cheaper contingent faculty. In either case, this could lead to a decline in achievable learning in liberal education courses. State budget model. With the state poised to change to performance-based budgeting at their public regional university, one president intended to directly pass those budget changes onto the colleges. The president split A&S into two colleges, one being STEM. She anticipated STEM programs would be growing while social science and humanities programs would remain static or even shrink. She wanted to provide the separated STEM college with maximum budget flexibility to support its growth rather than “keeping it financially tied” to programs with a perceived lower potential for growth. No known reason. At the direction of its new provost, a public research university began discussing dividing the College of Arts and Sciences into three colleges. The provost appointed a task force of faculty to review his recommendation to reorga- nize, yet surprisingly, never stated his reasoning for proposing this change. Without a stated rationale, speculation about the basis for reorganization ran rampant. The provost’s background seemed to align itself to this recommendation as he had just left the position of dean of a science college at another public research university where Arts and Sciences departments were organized into several discrete colleges. Some believed the move was simply the only way he knew to work with an A&S college. Others thought he was trying to decrease the influence of A&S on campus, while others thought he was trying to increase it. And still others believed it was all just a line for his CV. Although the task force recommended the college be split, when the task force’s report was circulated, the faculty were overwhelmingly against what was viewed as a baseless reorganization that could harm existing interdisciplinary activities and create an excessive amount of work for uncertain gain. The debate dragged on for a year at which point the topic was shelved. The provost did take a few departments from various colleges and place them into a new interdisci- plinary college he created, but he accepted a presidency at another institution shortly thereafter. Merging Two or More Colleges into One The next examples represent situations when two or more Arts and Sciences colleges are merged into one. The same drivers and processes in these cases may apply when multiple colleges are fused into fewer or when colleges are largely “reshuffled” (where Arts and Sciences programs are moved among colleges to the extent that the colleges are unlike their earlier composition).