After the 2026-2027 academic year, Bethel will no longer offer adult undergraduate bachelor’s degrees in psychology, business management or social work. Bethel provost Robin Rylaarsdam said these were “three programs in CAPS that were identified as not having enough healthy enrollment to continue on.”

The cuts come as a result of a larger shift in Bethel’s academic programs. Bethel aims to group its academic programs – graduate school (GS), college of arts and sciences (CAS) and college of adult and professional studies (CAPS) – into disciplines rather than entirely separate schools. The change has already been underway as the university introduced its school of business last fall and the Anderson family college of health sciences last spring. The new academic units have been in place since August 15, though Bethel’s website isn’t displaying that yet. 

Traditionally, the schools have operated independently from one another, but this made it difficult for any crossover of credits. If a CAS student needed a credit not offered by the CAS but offered via CAPS, he or she could enroll in that course, but the credit counted as a transfer credit, a source of frustration for university provost Robin Rylaarsdam. 

“We are one Bethel,” Rylaarsdam said. “We need to make a system so that any student can take any class that they’re academically qualified to take. Let’s not get in our own way on this.”

Rylaarsdam also said this merger will bring all of the experts within each discipline together, allowing a collaborative approach to curriculum-building. 

Post-baccalaureate nursing and special education degrees will continue to be offered, as well as Associate of Arts (A.A.) degrees and Addiction Studies and Alcohol and Drug Counseling certificates. 

As enrollment in the cut programs decreased, Rylaarsdam felt that there was no way to compete with the “giants” of online adult undergraduate programs such as  Grand Canyon University, the University of Phoenix and Southern New Hampshire University, resulting in these cuts. 

Social work effects

The primary draw of an adult undergraduate program was its versatility. 

“The vast majority, if not all, of our students were people who work full time,” associate director for the Bachelor of Social Work program Emily Blackmer said. “Doing an online program really was beneficial for them, because it allowed flexibility.” 

Blackmer saw online CAPS curricula as beneficial opportunities for people older than traditional undergraduate students to earn a degree and, often, to move on to graduate programs in a highly employable field. 

2024 United States Bureau of Labor data projected close to an average of 74,000 job openings in social work each year for the next decade. That’s an average growth rate of 6%, compared to the average growth rate of all other occupations, which is 3%. 

Bethel professor Eydie Shypulski is the social work department chair and director of the Bachelor of Social Work (B.S.W.) program. Shypulski feels there was not enough time for enrollment to reach a viable number. The CAPS B.S.W. program officially began in fall 2023 with a “soft launch” coming in fall of 2022. By fall 2025, the university announced it would no longer exist. 

“That’s not enough time to grow a program that was beginning to take root and grow,” Shypulski said. 

According to a report submitted to Bethel administration in December, the program enrolled 13 students in the 2023 fiscal year. Its goal was eight. In 2024, the goal was 15, and the department enrolled 14. In 2025, while “mid-cycle and with reduced visibility and marketing support,” per the report, as a result of the decided cuts, the department enrolled 10 of its goal of 20. So far in the 2026 fiscal year, with just summer and fall counted, the program has 11 students enrolled, with 15 as the goal. 

Those numbers only include students enrolled in Bachelor of Social Work classes and not those taking general education credits with the intention of pursuing a social work degree. 

In view of those numbers, the December report said “admissions leadership expressed confidence that the CAPS program would have met or exceeded the [fiscal year 2026] goal of 15 with continued recruitment and marketing support.”

Alternative options to cut CAPS programs

Upon receiving the news of Bethel’s academic shift in the fall of 2025, Blackmer and Shypulski began advocating for alternatives to provide similar opportunities to adult students. 

“We understand and respect the decision,” Blackmer said. “But we want to find a way to advocate for these folks.” 

These alternative options are still in development, but Blackmer and Shypulski both said they appreciated the help they’ve received from Bethel administrators in seeking opportunities for adult undergraduates. 

Shypulski is working with Bethel’s instructional design team to create a sustainable online program that supports both working adults and traditional, in-person undergrads. But she worries the resources allotted her won’t be enough. Since deciding on the spring 2027 cut, Bethel has ceased to market any form of a Bachelor of Social Work in its adult undergraduate program. 

With no visibility or marketing, Shypulski said prospective students and current students who don’t have time to finish before the program discontinues are looking elsewhere. That only adds to the lack of visibility social work already faces. 

Shypulski also believes many students don’t fully understand what a social work degree is, contributing to the program’s low numbers.

“It’s not a license to hand out turkeys [at Thanksgiving,]” Shypulski said. “It’s professional clinical practice that engages in communities and with individuals and families and in healing and addressing intergenerational trauma, and all of the things that we as people of faith are called to do.” 

For this reason, both Shypulski and Blackmer believe a social work program should be a “distinctive” program at every Christian university. 

From a logistical perspective, Rylaarsdam doesn’t believe the faith element is enough to draw the number of students needed to be competitive with the bigger universities. 

“When it comes to an adult looking for a degree to complete when they’re 29, when they’re 35, fewer people are going to value those things over the convenience and the cost,” Rylaarsdam said.  

The administration and social work department are still collaborating on possible opportunities for adult undergraduate degrees. Rylaarsdam said the Bethel administration remains open to a revamped “combo” of online adult undergraduates learning side-by-side with traditional undergraduates. 

These plans remain uncertain as of March 2026.

“The Social Work program is working with a variety of offices and administrators to design and propose possible pathways to reinstate an online degree program,” Rylaarsdam said in an email.