US colleges are cutting majors and slashing programs after years of putting it off
Christina Westman dreamed of working as a music therapist with patients with Parkinson’s disease and stroke when she began studying at St. Cloud State University.
But her academic career was in jeopardy in May when the Minnesota university’s board of trustees announced a plan to dismantle the music department and eliminate 42 programs and 50 minors.
It is part of a wave of program of cuts in recent months, as American universities large and small try to make ends meet. Among their budgetary challenges: Federal COVID relief money has now run out, operating costs are rising, and there are fewer high school students go straight to university.
The cuts mean more than just savings or even job losses. They often create unrest for students who chose a campus based on certain programs of study and then wrote checks or took out student loans.
“For me, it’s really been an anxiety disorder,” Westman, 23, said of beginning the endeavor that eventually led her to Augsburg University in Minneapolis. “It’s just the fear of the unknown.”
At St. Cloud State, most students are able to earn their degrees before the budget cuts take effect, but Westman’s music therapy major was new and hadn’t officially started yet. She’s spent the past three months in a frenzy of trying to find work in a new city, subletting her St. Cloud apartment after signing a lease. She moved into her new apartment on Friday.
For years, many colleges have been putting off budget cuts, said Larry Lee, who was acting president of St. Cloud State but left last month to lead Blackburn College in Illinois.
College enrollments have declined during the pandemic, but officials hoped the numbers would rise back to pre-COVID levels and had used federal relief aid to shore up their budgets in the meantime, he said.
“They held on, held on,” Lee said, noting that colleges must now confront their new reality.
Higher education gained some ground last fall and into the spring semester, largely because community college enrollment increased. started to recoveras shown by data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
But the trend for four-year colleges remains worrisome. Even without growing concerns about the cost of college and the long-term burden of student debt, the group of young adults is shrinking.
Birth rates fell during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and never recovered. Now those smaller classes are preparing to graduate and go to college.
“It’s a very difficult math problem to solve,” said Patrick Lane, vice chairman of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and a leading expert on student demographics.
The situation is further complicated by the chaotic overhaul of the federal government apparatus. application for financial assistance. Millions of students entered summer vacation still wondering where they would go to college this fall and how they would pay for it. With jobs still plentiful, though not as much as last yearsome experts fear students will not register at all.
“This year, next fall, it’s going to be bad,” said Katharine Meyer, a fellow in the Governance Studies Program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonprofit Brookings Institution. “I think a lot of colleges are really worried that they’re not going to meet their enrollment goals.”
Many colleges, like St. Cloud State, had already begun to tap into their budget reserves. The university’s enrollment rose to about 18,300 students in fall 2020, before steadily declining to about 10,000 students in fall 2023.
St. Cloud State’s student population has stabilized, Lee said, but spending was far too high for the reduced enrollment. The university’s budget deficit totaled $32 million over the past two years, forcing the deep cuts.
Some colleges have taken more extreme measures, close their doors. That happened with the 1,000 students Birmingham South College in Alabama, the 900 students Fontbonne University in Missouri, Wells College in New York with 350 students and Goddard College in Vermont with 220 students.
However, cuts seem to be happening more often. Two of Public Universities in North Carolina was given the green light last month to cut more than a dozen courses, ranging from ancient Mediterranean studies to physics.
Arkansas State University announced last fall that it would cut nine programs. Three of the 64 colleges in the State University of New York system have cut programs because of low enrollment and budget problems.
Other schools that are phasing out and reducing programs include: West Virginia UniversityDrake University in Iowa, the University of Nebraska campus in Kearney, North Dakota State University and, on the other side of the state, Dickinson State University.
Experts say this is just the beginning. Even schools that aren’t cutting right away are rethinking their degree offerings. At Pennsylvania State University, officials are looking to close overlapping and underfunded academic programs as enrollment at its satellite campuses declines.
Especially students in smaller programs and in the humanitieswhere a smaller proportion of students now graduate than 15 years ago.
“It’s a humanitarian disaster for all the faculty and staff involved, not to mention the students who want to pursue this,” said Bryan Alexander, a senior scholar at Georgetown University who has written about higher education. “It’s an open question how much more colleges and universities can economize their way to sustainability.”
For Terry Vermillion, who just retired after 34 years as a music professor at St. Cloud State, the cuts are hard to watch. The nation’s music programs took a hit during the pandemiche said, calling Zoom a downright “disastrous” for many public school programs.
“We just couldn’t really do music lessons online effectively, so there’s a hole,” he said. “And you know, we’re just starting to get out of that hole and we’re just starting to recover a little bit. And then the cuts come.”
For St. Cloud State music students like Lilly Rhodes, the biggest fear is what will happen if the program is phased out. New students will not be admitted to the department and its professors will be looking for new jobs.
“If you shut down the entire music department, it’s terribly difficult to keep ensembles alive,” she said. “You don’t have musicians coming in, so when our seniors graduate, they move on, and our ensembles get smaller and smaller.
“It’s a little hard to move on when it’s like that,” she said.
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