A Lesson to Be Learned

Abstract

The question of what the closings mean to the future of existing academic programs is at least, and perhaps more, important than the question of what the closings mean for the education of the information professional of tomorrow. Although administrators and faculty need to learn a lesson from the closings, they may not be recognizing the right one. The challenge facing private institutions with library and information studies programs is different from that facing public institutions. In principle, those ought to be equivalent, but they are not. Public universities have a governmental mandate to serve the needs of the state, and thus library and information studies can appeal for support on that ground. While there is some legitimacy for such an argument, it is doubtful that it will suffice if other aspects of the LIS program are weak, and if the state university is experiencing financial burdens. Many states have no LIS programs in their public universities and survive quite nicely. At the highest levels, most universities employ a strategic assessment of academic divisions which encompasses three dimensions: quality, demand, and centrality. Clearly, academic programs of low quality ought to be upgraded or abandoned. In private institutions, the concern for demand is likely to be stronger than in public ones, but in all cases the university administrators need to be able to make an economic argument about income versus expenses. If library schools were closed for either of the first two of these reasons, while we ought to lament their passing, the reasons may be understood in the context of obvious realities. What troubles many in the LIS community is the closing of academic programs which were of high