Amid financial struggles, more schools are cutting programs

“If it was just international students, maybe colleges could make up the difference somewhere else,” said Sarah Spreitzer of the American Council on Education, which represents about 1,600 universities. “If only the labs were closing, maybe colleges could make up the difference somewhere else. But all of these things have suddenly happened, all at once.”

In November, Boston University said it will not accept new PhD students in a dozen humanities and social sciences programs. Then in July, BU announced it will close three satellite social work programs that offer evening and weekend classes to 35 students with other full-time jobs and childcare responsibilities.

Two staff members associated with the programs were terminated, and BU encouraged students to finish their degrees online or by commuting to the main campus in Boston.

Hallie Brown, a student in the Bedford program, said commuting is unfeasible for many of her peers. She nannies for 30 hours a week to pay her bills and is considering un-enrolling from BU.

“We have been referring to it as a dropout plan, because really that’s the option that they are giving us,” Brown said. “BU talks a good game about wanting to be on the side of diversifying access to the field, but then they are making this decision to cut a program that services people who would otherwise not have access.”

In a statement, Barbara Jones, dean of BU’s school of social work, called the end of the programs a “loss” and said the courses were not “drawing enough students to sustain themselves.”

This trend is not unique to Massachusetts and, in some cases, is being driven by lawmakers. The “Big Beautiful Bill” included a provision that could revoke student loans from programs whose graduates do not meet certain income thresholds. Legislators in Texas are targeting academic minors with low enrollment at public universities. And Indiana, Ohio, and Utah passed laws this year that required state schools to eliminate programs with few graduates. In Indiana, six public universities eliminated 400 majors ahead of the mandate.

Most of the affected programs and humanities courses are small and graduate a fraction of the students they did just a decade ago. Rhode Island College in Providence suspended 20 degrees, all in programs such as gender studies and modern languages, that project to graduate six or fewer students each year.

“The first place you look to cut is where the fewest students will be impacted,” said Joshua Goodman, an education economist at the BU Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. “In tough times, you need to look closely at what programs do not make money. And since almost every college is under financial strain, closing down a program is not unusual right now.”

Some colleges are explicitly divesting from liberal arts courses in favor of programs that they say offer more immediate job prospects. In designing a “career-focused” curriculum “driven by employer needs,” officials at Champlain College in Vermont stopped accepting students in seven majors, including pre-law, accounting, and data analytics. The University of Maine Board of Trustees in July voted to create five new adult education offerings while closing seven low-enrollment degrees.

But most degree closures are tied to financial woes.

A consolidation of four academic degrees at Clark University in Worcester is part of a larger plan to streamline the budget that includes an indefinite hiring freeze and dozens of faculty layoffs. And Berklee College of Music announced it would not enroll new students into its contemporary theater program as a result of a review that considered enrollment trends and revenues, a spokesperson said.

Hanging over schools is the potential for a decline in international enrollment as the Trump administration clamps down on student visas from some countries and scrutinizes applicants’ social media accounts. Around 2,700 foreign students, or 32 percent of the Berklee student body, attend the college.

At Lesley University, recent academic cuts may reflect financial challenges that predate the second Trump term. Enrollment at the school has dropped 45 percent since 2019, and dozens of professors were let go in 2023. There’s also been turnover among senior leadership, with its provost and chief financial officer both stepping down recently. And there’s growing fear among some students their degree programs are in danger of losing accreditation, which schools need to assess federal financial aid.

It’s manifested in chaos for the creative writing MFA program at Lesley, a “low-residency model” in which students from across the country take classes online and come to campus a few weeks each year for around $50,000 in tuition and other fees.

In 2023, the college limited acceptances in the MFA degree to once a year, rather than every six months, then later paused enrollment entirely. In June, the school did not call many adjunct faculty back to campus for the residency period of the program, using outside hires instead, which some professors contend is a violation of their union contract.

In a statement, Lesley officials said the creative writing program is not being canceled outright, but rather reimagined in partnership with the Visual Arts department. The decision is not related to financial challenges, the school said, but rather to maintain “its tradition of offering something that is both unique and connected to evolving career opportunities.”

Students were appropriately connected with faculty for the June residency, the statement continued.

But Lesley’s actions still spurred outrage among longtime professors, including Cassie Seinuk, who ended a reading during the residency period in June by proclaiming on stage that “Better Lesley” — the college’s strategic plan for the future — “is a lie.” Afterward, creative writing students walked out in protest.

“The program has gone from different to a whole new world that we don’t know,” Seinuk said recently. “It feels like every residency we would return to this other dramatic cut or change to the program.”

Without incoming students, the current ones in the program have fewer people to bounce their work off of, and many feel that the college’s actions affected their education, said Audrey Lee, a third-semester fiction writing student from Wisconsin.

“We hit the point of being really discouraged,” Lee said. “There’s definitely been a clear decline in the amount of programming that we are given when we are out there, and we are the ones dealing with the consequences.”

Diti Kohli can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @ditikohli_.