Higher ed programs gutted
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An editorial from the Chicago Tribune.
The list of executions is a stunner.
B.A. in French — dead, or in Hoosier political-ease, “Suspend (with Teach-Out toward Elimination)/Written Commitment to Merge/Consolidate the Program before AY26-27.”
B.A. in Art History — dead. B.A. in Italian — dead. M.A. in Japanese — dead. M.A. in Theater and Drama — dead. M.A. in Chinese — dead.
That’s merely a taste of the carnage announced Monday by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE), as planned for one of America’s great universities, Indiana University in beautiful Bloomington. Since there are 116 degree programs disappearing from Indiana’s Big Ten flagship campus, and 222 across the Indiana University system from Indianapolis to Kokomo, we could have filled this entire space with a list.
And, believe us, we were sorely tempted.
But we’d have needed yet more space to include similar cuts at Ball State University, Indiana State University, Purdue University, Ivy Tech Community College and the University of Southern Indiana. Ball State is losing degree programs in philosophy, geology and German, to name but three.
All in all, public schools in Indiana are losing some 20% of their current degree programs.
What on earth happened? The cuts are the work of the ICHE, which would be better to call itself the Indiana Commission for the Gutting of Higher Education.
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Not sure, but I think these are new programs under consideration:
https://www.in.gov/che/files/Info-A-Status-of-Programs-2025-6-AA-and-Q-Version-2.pdf
This is the list of programs that are being consolidated, eliminated, or on their way to being eliminated:
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It's everywhere. I'm philosophically opposed to making our lower case l liberal arts colleges and universities reduced to tech schools on steroids. I'm a big fan of STEM education, but we need arts along with sciences. People who go to uni to get a degree in, say, music theory or art history should know that they're not necessarily going to get jobs directly on their field, and that shouldn't be the only measurement of success for higher ed. These so-called "outcome measurements" are being used to cancel programs everywhere.
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It's not that liberal arts and universities should be reduced to tech schools.
Just that we may have way too much higher-ed capacity for liberal arts degree programs.
These eliminations of liberal art degree programs may actually be "right sizing" rather than "gutting" our liberal arts higher-ed capacity. -
This is a cultural evisceration, part of a propagandistic and economic agenda.
It will have a profound effect on the masses, the middle class, and even on the professional class in years to come.
A similar agenda is changing public education at every grade level.
This is not the way to build or maintain a civilization.
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Sigh ...
This debate misses a number of fundamental points.
Resources are always moving around in universities. They tend to move slowly because universities are human institutions and tumult is bad. But resources do need to move. At mine, the English department was double the size of the economics department despite serving fewer than half the number of students and having about 1/3 the number of majors (and still declining). Pressures build within schools like A&S and eventually deans decide that the retiring T.S. Elliot scholar who teaches 12-students in 35 person classes won't be replaced. Instead, that position will go to the psychology or health sciences department whose 35 person classes have 50 person wait lists.
This is not about the "death of the humanities" writ large. Yes, big humanities departments are shrinking. They are not disappearing. And most people on campus with decision making authority understand the importance of a rich set of humanities disciplines and course offerings. That's what makes the "uni" in university.
Some small programs likely do need to be shut down so resources can be moved. But that's not the job of state legislatures absent clear evidence that the decision makers closer to the issue (administrative leaders on campus) are dysfunctional. In most cases, these resource allocation decisions should be made on campus after due consideration of the costs and benefits. States set the broad outlines of the budget, but universities are better positioned to determine how to allocate that budget across competing needs.
In other words, what Ax said, but with the argument that the proper decision makers are on campus.
