Higher education faces two significant challenges: bloated curricula delaying degree completion and structural resistance to innovative, cross-disciplinary programs. Both problems are rooted, in large part, in a culture of tradition and unchecked faculty “ownership” over the curriculum.
Faculty influence can be an important safeguard for academic freedom and quality, but it can also lead to unintended consequences. The lack of institutional checks and balances to ensure efficiency, paired with the lack of inherent incentives to streamline curricula or collaborate across disciplines, has created barriers to student success and stifled innovation in university education.
Bloated Curriculum
One of the primary causes of curriculum bloat is the strong yet misguided ownership that faculty members have over their programs and courses. Faculty are the primary architects of the curriculum within their departments, shaping it based on their own academic interests, expertise, priorities, and occasional whimsical and unpredictable ideas about the intent of education. This control can also lead to an accumulation of course requirements that may not serve the broader educational needs of students.
As faculty members develop new courses or revise existing ones, it’s not uncommon for departments to add more requirements to degree programs. They may add courses that reflect the faculty’s specific research interests or their perspectives on where industry is going, leading to niche offerings that, while perhaps valuable, end up bloating a degree program’s requirements. Over time, these additions can result in a curriculum that is difficult for students to navigate, requiring them to take more credits than originally intended or spend additional semesters to meet graduation requirements.
This dynamic exacerbates the problem of delayed graduation rates, especially considering there are no institutional incentives to increase efficiency. Sprawling degree requirements leave students struggling to enroll in the necessary courses due to limited availability, scheduling conflicts, or prerequisite issues. The result is that many students, despite their initial goal of graduating in four years, end up extending their time in college—an outcome that increases their financial burden and delays their entry into the workforce.
The Impact of Internal Structures on Cross-Disciplinary Programs
The same structures that contribute to bloat also stifle the development of cross-disciplinary programs. In theory, interdisciplinary education is an ideal way to prepare students for the increasingly complex challenges they will face in the modern workforce. However, in practice, faculty and departmental structures often resist the creation of cross-disciplinary degree programs.
Departments operate as silos within the larger institution, each with their own faculty, budget, and set of priorities. Faculty members, who have invested years of work in their specific discipline, may see little incentive to collaborate across departments. Cross-disciplinary programs often require negotiating ownership of courses, deciding which department “owns” the program, and determining how resources—such as faculty time and funding—will be allocated. These internal political struggles can delay or even prevent the creation of new, innovative programs that combine disciplines in meaningful ways. It just becomes more trouble than it's worth.
Without clear incentives for interdisciplinary work, why would faculty members support or participate in the development of new programs? This is just as true for curriculum streamlining—faculty are not evaluated based on how efficiently students complete their degrees, so there’s little motivation to reduce unnecessary or redundant courses. In this environment, cross-disciplinary innovation is often seen as an additional burden rather than an opportunity for creative collaboration.
Incentivizing Streamlining and Cross-Disciplinary Innovation
Rearchitecting curriculum is not an impossible feat. Transformation does happen. We need to address the obstacles and rethink how faculty are incentivized and measured in curriculum development and optimization so this work becomes the norm, not the rarity it is today. Rather than viewing the work of streamlining and interdisciplinary collaboration as optional or secondary to a faculty member’s core responsibilities, universities should actively train faculty in curriculum development, build it into their responsibilities, and compensate them for their contributions.
To do this, institutions should incorporate curriculum design and efficiency as a factor in faculty evaluations and promotions. If faculty are recognized and rewarded for creating programs that allow students to graduate in four years (or less), or for reducing unnecessary course requirements, they are more likely to engage in this work. Similarly, universities can establish clear benchmarks for interdisciplinary collaboration, providing grants or stipends for faculty who participate in the creation of cross-disciplinary programs.
Another potential solution is to rethink the rigid departmental structures that contribute to the siloed nature of academic disciplines. Rather than organizing faculties solely by school, college, or department, universities could consider creating shared spaces or interdisciplinary “hubs” where faculty from different fields collaborate. There is an old social psychology concept called propinquity, where collaborations are likely to occur with those who are in close proximity to one another. If applied to enhancing faculty collaboration, a simple solution is co-locating faculty together in the same office areas, or sharing office spaces. As simple as this sounds, anyone who has worked in higher education knows that most international boundaries are more permeable than faculty office spaces.
The historic practice of faculty influence over the curriculum is both a strength and a challenge for higher education. While it ensures academic freedom and quality, it can also be a primary contributor to curriculum bloat and resistance to interdisciplinary innovation, which is critical for student success. To truly serve students, universities must reimagine faculty roles and create structures that incentivize innovation, collaboration, and efficiency.
This article was written by President Nicholas Ladany and originally published on Forbes.
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