USU doesn’t offer all majors, but no other school does, either
Two years ago Dane Jackson of Fillmore had to make a tough decision. After being offered scholarships to both the University of Utah and Utah State University, he was torn between USU’s reputation for engineering and the allure of the city and the larger campus of the U.
Jackson said he decided on USU for a few reasons – the scholarship was more attractive, his parents and his brother are USU alumni and he liked the campus. But it was the academic reputation of the College of Engineering that clinched the deal.
The opportunity to study in USU’s Engineering department on scholarship was too much to pass up, so Jackson enrolled in the electrical engineering program as a freshman.
The strong reputation of USU in engineering is one of the unique aspects of USU. As the state’s land-grant institution, USU offers majors in agriculture, natural resources and engineering not found at the other Utah universities.
This adds to the reputation USU has as a place to go for a unique higher education in the state, said former Interim Provost H. Craig Petersen, who was recently appointed by USU President Kermit Hall as chief of staff and special assistant to the president.
But some programs, including an architecture major, are not offered at USU.
“Here at Utah State, we do landscape architecture,” Petersen said. “[At the] University of Utah, they do a regular, traditional architecture program. The reason is simply that the missions of the universities specify that they emphasize certain areas. In our state it really isn’t cost effective to duplicate programs. So the [University of Utah] has some designations, we have some designations. That saves the state money.”
The decision to offer programs at one university over another comes from the Utah Board of Regents, the governing body for the state’s universities. Petersen said some degrees are probably added to programs because of the institution’s history.
“My suspicion is that some of them reflect actual decisions and others may just reflect history of what universities were doing at the time when they began to think about the decisions,” Petersen said.
The Regents don’t just arbitrarily divvy out programs to the schools, he said. Programs are given to a university based on a couple of factors.
“I think it really reflects again maybe the history of the institution and which is best able to provide those degrees,” Petersen said.
He also said duplicating programs at universities isn’t cost effective and needs to be avoided in Utah in particular.
For students who must go elsewhere for a major after completing their general education, Petersen said he could offer some advice.
“If [students] know that that’s going to happen and they have some idea where they’re going to go, then they need to get together with their adviser here and make sure that they take courses here that will be easily transferable to an institution,” he said. “If it is in the state of Utah, that’s going to be pretty straightforward and pretty easy. If it’s out of the state of Utah that will be a little more of a problem.”
For students like Dane Jackson, however, they don’t have to leave to find a better program. Jackson recently returned from a two-year Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission to resume his studies started two years ago, knowing that he had made the right decision. Jackson said even if USU “wasn’t as good in engineering, I probably would have gone to USU.”