U.S. colleges slash majors in effort to cut costs, leaving some students scrambling (2024)

Christina Westman dreamed of working with Parkinson's disease and stroke patients as a music therapist when she started studying at St. Cloud State University.

But her schooling was upended in May when administrators at the Minnesota college announced a plan to eliminate its music department as it slashes 42 degree programs and 50 minors.

It's part of a wave ofprogram cutsin recent months, as U.S. colleges large and small try to make ends meet. Among their budget challenges: Federal COVID relief money is now gone, operational costs are rising and fewer high school graduates aregoing straight to college.

• Do you need a college degree to succeed?
• How long does it take for a college degree to pay off?

The cuts mean more than just savings, or even job losses. Often, they createturmoil for studentswho chose a campus because of certain degree programs and then wrote checks or signed up for student loans.

"For me, it's really been anxiety-ridden," said Westman, 23, as she began the effort that ultimately led her to transfer to Augsburg University in Minneapolis. "It's just the fear of the unknown."

At St. Cloud State, most students will be able to finish their degrees before cuts kick in, but Westman's music therapy major was a new one that hadn't officially started. She has spent the past three months in a mad dash to find work in a new city and sublet her apartment in St. Cloud after she had already signed a lease. She was moving into her new apartment Friday.

For years, many colleges held off making cuts, said Larry Lee, who was acting president of St. Cloud State but left last month to lead Blackburn College in Illinois.

College enrollment declinedduring the pandemic, but officials hoped the figures would recover to pre-COVID levels and had used federal relief money to prop up their budgets in the meantime, he said.

Colleges face new reality

"They were holding on, holding on," Lee said, noting colleges must now face their new reality.

Higher education made up some ground last fall and in the spring semester, largely as community college enrollmentbegan to rebound, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data showed.

But the trend for four-year colleges remains worrisome. Americans are increasingly skeptical about the value and cost of a bachelor's degree withthe majority sayingthey feel the U.S. higher education system is headed in the "wrong direction."

Thatskepticism comes as the cost of college has soared in recent years and as Americans have accumulated$1.7 trillionin student debt, a burden that has made it harder for some to buy homes or achieve other hallmarks of middle-class life. Between 1980 and 2023, the average price of college tuition, fees and room and board skyrocketed 155%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The average tuition for private colleges is now $39,723, U.S. News and World Report found.

Only 1 in 4 American's say a bachelor's degree is necessary to secure a well-paying job, according to a Marchsurveyfrom the Pew Research Center. To be sure, employment opportunities and earnings for young men without college degrees have improved in the last decade: One in three U.S. companieseliminated bachelor's degree requirements from some job postings this year, recentdatafrom Intelligent, a college prep company, shows.

Still, college-degree holders in general continue to hold a substantial edge over those without a college degree when it comes to job salaries. The typical college grad now earns about $60,000 annually, compared with $36,000 for people with only high school degrees, according todatafrom the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

Even without growing concerns about the cost of college and the long-term burden of student debt, the pool of young adults is shrinking.Birth rates fellduring the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 and never recovered. Now those smaller classes are preparing to graduate and head off to college.

"It's very difficult math to overcome," said Patrick Lane, vice president at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, a leading authority on student demographics.

Complicating the situation: the federal government's chaotic overhaul of itsfinancial aid application. Millions of students entered summer break still wondering where they were going to college this fall and how they would pay for it. With jobs still plentiful, althoughnot as much as last year, some experts fear studentswon't bother to enroll at all.

"This year going into 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 concerned they're not going to make their enrollment targets."

Many colleges like St. Cloud State already had started plowing through their budget reserves. The university's enrollment rose to around 18,300 students in fall 2020 before steadily falling to about 10,000 students in fall 2023.

St. Cloud State's student population has now stabilized, Lee said, but spending was far too high for the reduced number of students. The college's budget shortfall totaled $32 million over the past two years, forcing the sweeping cuts.

Some colleges have taken more extreme steps,closingtheir doors. That happened at the 1,000-studentBirmingham-Southern Collegein Alabama, the 900-studentFontbonne Universityin Missouri, the 350-student Wells College in New York and the 220-student Goddard College in Vermont.

Cuts, however, appear to be more commonplace. Two ofNorth Carolina's public universitiesgot the green light last month to eliminate more than a dozen degree programs ranging from ancient Mediterranean studies tophysics.

Arkansas State University announced last fall it was phasing out nine programs. Three of the 64 colleges in the State University of New York system have cut programs amid low enrollment and budget woes.

Other schools slashing and phasing out programs includeWest Virginia University, Drake 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 it's just the beginning. Even schools that aren't immediately making cuts are reviewing their degree offerings. At Pennsylvania State University, officials are looking for duplicative and under-enrolled academic programs as the number of students shrinks at its branch campuses.

Particularly affected are students in smaller programs and those in thehumanities, which nowgraduatea smaller share of students than 15 years ago.

Professors affected too

"It's a humanitarian disaster for all of the faculty and staff involved, not to mention the students who want to pursue this stuff," said Bryan Alexander, a Georgetown University senior scholar who has written on higher education. "It's an open question to what extent colleges and universities can cut 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 programstook a hit during the pandemic, he said, with Zoom band nothing short of "disastrous" for many public school programs.

"We were just unable to really effectively teach music online, so there's a gap," he said. "And, you know, we're just starting to come out of that gap and we're just starting to rebound a little bit. And then the cuts are coming."

For St. Cloud State music majors such as Lilly Rhodes, the biggest fear is what will happen as the program is phased out. New students won't be admitted to the department and her professors will look for new jobs.

"When you suspend the whole music department, it's awfully difficult to keep ensembles alive," she said. "There's no musicians coming in, so when our seniors graduate, they go on, and our ensembles just keep getting smaller and smaller.

"It's a little difficult to keep going if it's like this," she said.

In:
• College