What are some reasons that lead to a university course being no longer offered?
I am thinking in particular about the course "Computational sustainability" or CPSC 530M offered in University of British Columbia.
I am guessing the following could be the reasons, but I'm not sure:
Some reasons we've eliminated courses in my department:
In one of the University's that I attended, the Geological Engineering courses were scrapped (and consequently, the entire degree), despite their uniqueness. Having said that, the reasons were valid, which included:
All these combined to inspire the powers that be to cancel the courses, and thus the degree in its entirety.
It really depends on the country. In Brazil, where everything comes down to bureaucracy and authority, a professor is hired through a nation-wide exam/contest that has three or four phases and takes several days, to be responsible for a single course. Of course he/she will teach other courses, but that mandatory course is really the reason of his/her existence as faculty member. All other courses come and go, but those that are mandatory for all students to graduate and tied to that professor's career will always stay -- unless the faculty comes together and decide not to. If that happens, it usually means a bad thing for the professor who was in charge of the course: what would you do if the reason for your existence as a faculty member just vanished?
Optional courses depend on the goodwill of the department's director or of the faculty. That means if a professor wants to teach a course within the same department (say, Physics) which is not that course she was hired for (say, Quantum Physics), she has to ask for permission either from the head of the department or her other colleagues. On the other hand, if the department needs her to teach a course she wasn't hired for and maybe isn't comfortable teaching (say, Fluid Mechanics), it means she will teach it anyway.
Well, to sum it up: a course disappears because (most of) the faculty want it to.
The answers vary. Sometimes there's not demand, not enough registered people for the course, or no professor that can teach it. Courses may stay in the books (the catalog) but don't get offered. Perfect example, my department offers courses in applied probability and stochastic differential equations in the catalog, but it doesn't get taught.
As for your particular course, I'm not sure.
Just to add one more possible reason:
At our department when one professor takes a Sabbatical his courses are usually not offered by the remaining professors.
They also can vanish because of restructuring, either of its content, or because of the greater degree changes. This happened a huge amount over my undergraduate degree, as my university did a near complete overhaul, changing many 4 year bachelors degree's into 3 year bachelors + 2 year masters, and adding significant extra cross disciplinary requirements.
2 units may have there content reorganized into 1, or 3 units into 2 etc.
or unit might be appear to be cancelled, but is actually being deffered as it's position in the course structure has changed. For example, something might vanish for a few years, if it was originally a 2nd or 3rd year undergrad elective, but became a 5th year post-grad elective. Which may result from its pre-requisites moving around.
In one of the cases where this happened to me, even the faculty concerned thought the unit was being cancelled for good -- possibly because of the huge mess communicating is, or possibly because it was infact cancelled, only to be brought back as a separate decision, after seeing how it would fit into the new structure.
