The Closing of the American Mind

[Sheilbh]

I mentioned this in the Brexit thread as I think it is really extraordinary. Part of it is clearly Trump and, I think, in particular the targeting of foreign students and staff which I think is simply to send a message and discipline/warn off dissent.

But I think there are broader worrying trends here. The summer update from Bryan Alexander - an update of a regular string of similar news:

Academic closures, mergers, cuts: a summer 2025 update
Posted on July 8, 2025 by Bryan Alexander   

Greetings from early July. I'm back home in northern Virginia where the heat is blazing and the humidity sopping.  Weather.com thinks it "feels like 102° F" and I agree.  The cats also agree, because they retreated elegantly inside to air conditioning after a brief outside stroll.

I wrote "back home" because my wife and I spent last week celebrating our 32nd anniversary in Canada (here's one snapshot).  Afterwards I was hoping to get back into the swing of things, blogging, Substacking, vlogging various topics already under way, but things have been advancing at such a manic pace that I have to leap in in a hurry.

Case in point: after blogging about campus closures, cuts, and mergers last month more closures and cuts (albeit no mergers) have appeared in just the past few weeks.  In this post you'll see a list of these, with links to supporting news stories and official documents. Alas, this has become a tradition on this site.  (From last year: March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May, June, July, September, November. From this year: February, June.) My book on peak higher education is now in the editing process; hopefully by the time it appears the topic won't be simply historical.

Today we'll touch on one closure, then focus on cuts, with a few reflections at the end.

1. Closing colleges and universities

In Michigan Siena Heights University (Catholic) will close after the upcoming academic year.  The reasons: "the financial situation, operational challenges, and long-term sustainability," according to the official statement.  A local account concurs, "citing rising costs and stiffer competition for new students."

The official website doesn't reflect this on its front page.

2. Program and staffing cuts

Also in Michigan, Concordia University (Lutheran) is shutting down most of its Ann Arbor campus programs. A much smaller set of offerings is what's next:

    Starting June 2025, the private Lutheran institution will offer just nine programs — all in medical-related fields — on its physical campus. That's down from 53 campus programs the university currently lists on its website. It will offer another seven online programs, mostly in education fields, which is down from more than 60 currently.

Also nearby, Michigan State University (public, research) announced its intention to cut faculty and staff positions this year.  The drivers: inflation boosting costs, especially in health care; Trump administration research funding cuts; possible state support cuts; potential international student reduction.

Brown University (research; Rhode Island) is planning to cut an unspecified number of staff this summer.  Furthermore, "[a]dditional measures include scaling back capital spending and adjusting graduate admissions levels after limiting budget growth for doctoral programs earlier this year."  The reasons here are financial, but based on the Trump administration's cuts to federal research funding, not enrollment problems.

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education announced shutting down a huge sweep of academic programs across that state's public universities.  More than 400 degrees will end, with 75 ended outright and 333 "merged or consolidated" with other programs.  The whole list is staggering.  There's a lot of detail in that Indiana plan, from defining student minima to establishing various options for campuses, appealing closures to timelines for revving up new degrees.  It's unclear how many faculty and/or staff cuts will follow.

Columbia College Chicago (private, arts focused) laid off twenty full-time professors.  The school is facing enrollment declines and financial problems. Nearly all of these faculty member are – were – tenure track, which makes this another example of the queen sacrifice.

University of California-Santa Cruz (public, research) is terminating its German and Persian language programs, laying off their instructors.  This sounds part of a broader effort to cut costs against a deficit, a deficit caused by "rising labor costs and constrained student enrollment growth," according to officials.

Boston University (private, research) announced it would lay off 120 staff members as part of a budget-cutting strategy. BU will also close 120 open staff positions and "around 20 positions will undergo a change in schedule" (I'm not sure what that means – shift from full time to part?).    The reasons: Trump administration cuts and uncertainty, plus the longstanding issues of "rising inflation, changing demographics, declining graduate enrollment, and the need to adapt to new technologies."

The president of Temple University (public, research, Pennsylvania) discussed job cuts as part of a 5% budget cut.  Reasons include lower enrollment which led to "a structural deficit [for which] university reserves were used to cover expenses."

Champlain College (Vermont) is closing some low-enrolling majors. The avowed goal is to
"design a new 'career-focused' curriculum for the fall of 2026 'that is focused on and driven by employer needs and student interests.'"

The accounting program, for instance, saw its enrollment decline from 60 students in 2015 to 20 in February 2024, according to documents from the school's Academic Affairs Committee. The law program, similarly, had little student interest, Hernandez said, and had only three students apply in the fall of 2023, while the data analytics program had only two applications.

At the same time the school is facing serious challenges.  Enrollment has sunk from 4,778 students in 2016 to 3,200 last year.  The college ran deficits in some reason years and a federal audit criticized the amount of debt it carries.  This year "the college's bond rating was lowered, and its outlook downgraded to 'negative' by S&P Global Ratings."

A small but symbolic cut is under way at Albright College (private, liberal arts, Pennsylvania), whose president decided to sell their art college at auction.  "It includes pieces by Karel Appel, Romare Bearden, Robert Colescott, Bridget Riley, Leon Golub, Jasper Johns, Jacob Lawrence, Marisol, Gordon Parks, Jesús Rafael Soto and Frederick Eversley, among others."

Why do this?  according to the administration, it was a question of relative value:

"We needed to stop the bleeding," says James Gaddy, vice-president for administration at Albright, noting that over the past two years the college has experienced shortfalls of $20m. Calling himself and the college's president Debra Townsley, both of whom were hired last year, "turn-around specialists", Gaddy claimed that Albright's 2,300-object art collection was "not core to our mission" as an educational institution and was costing the college more than the art is worth.

    "The value of the artworks is not extraordinary," he says, estimating the total value of the pieces consigned to Pook & Pook at $200,000, but claimed that the cost of maintaining the collection was high and that the cost of staffing the art gallery where the objects were displayed and (mostly) stored was "more than half a million dollars" a year.

3 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet

Cornell University is preparing staff cuts in the wake of Trump administration research funding reductions.

The University of Minnesota's administration agreed to a 7.5% cut across its units, along with a tuition increase.  The president cited frozen state support and rising costs.

New York University (NYU) announced a 3% budget cut.  So far this is about "emphasizing cuts to such functions as travel, events, meals, and additional other-than-personal-service (OTPS) items." NYU will keep on not hiring new administrators and is encouraging some administrators and tenured professors to retire.

Yale University paused ten ongoing construction projects because of concerns about cuts to federal monies.

Many of these stories reflect trends I've been observing for a while.  Declining enrollment is a major problem for most institutions. The strategy of cutting jobs to balance a budget remains one at least some leaders find useful. The humanities tend to suffer more cuts than others (scroll down the Indiana pdf for a sample). Depending on the state, state governments can increase budget problems or alter academic program offerings.

The second Trump administration's campaign against higher education is drawing blood, as we can see from universities citing the federal research cuts in their budgets and personnel decisions. Note that this is before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's provisions take hold, from capping student aid to increasing endowment taxes. And this is also before whatever decrease will appear with international student enrollment this fall. (Here's my video series on Trump vs higher ed; new episode is in the pipeline.)

Note the number of elite institutions in today's post.  In the past I've been told that the closures, mergers, and cuts primarily hit low-ranked and marginal institutions, which was sometimes true. But now we're seeing top tier universities enacting budget cuts, thanks to the Trump administration.

Let me close by reminding everyone that these are human stories. Program cuts hurt students' course of student. Budget cuts impact instructors and staff of all kinds. When we see the statistics pile up we can lose sight of the personal reality.  My heart goes out to everyone injured by these institutional moves.

Finally, I'd like to invite anyone with information on a college or university's plans to close, merge, or cut to share them with me, either as comments on this post, as notes on social media, or by contacting me privately here.  I write these posts based largely on public, open intelligence (news reports, investigations, roundups) but also through tips, since higher education sometimes has issues with transparency.  We need better information on these events.

(thanks to Will Emerson, Karl Hakkarainen, Kristen Nyht, Cristián Opazo, Peter Shea, Jason Siko, George Station, Nancy Smyth, Ed Webb, and Andrew Zubiri for supplying links and feedback)

To add to that this email, which did the rounds from a University of Chicago Classicist:



I post that letter not because it's particularly unusual but precisely because it's not. I've seen similar from numerous institutions - it just happens to be the most recent. I also note the suggestion that academic leaders are invoking Trump as an excuse to do what they were already planning as I see that come up a lot (and I think the eight updates before the election provide some evidence of this).

There do seem to be trends. Falling enrollment and rising costs (both of degrees and for institutions) - I believe that college admission is declining now and appears to have peaked in 2010. The humanities and foreign (or ancient) languages seem particularly vulnerable - from what I've read some of the most venerable institutions for language learning are basically shutting down. There seems to be a giddy/unhinged enthusiasm for AI from leadership. It seems to me that they're also doubling down on the "utility" of education: whether that's market-responsive or a political utility.

(I fully get the critique that there's no such thing as de-politicised knowledge or art for art's sake - I think that critique is true. But we need to simultaneously realise that and behave as if it's not. Not in the US where it's nakedly political, but a bit like acknowledging the deeply political nature of the legal system while also recognising the social benefit in pretending it's not.)

I've no doubt there's real structural challenges and Trump is challenging (if focused, as on his cabinet appointments, on the Ivies). But even looking at Trump, it makes me wonder what the point is of those massive multi-billion endowments and fund managers, and for profit spin offs? If they are not to insulate the independence of these elite institutions, then hat are they for? And that seems to me the wider problem is that there's a deep crisis of self-confidence across the entire sector where it feels like none of them (or none of the leaders) have any clear sense what they as individual institutions or higher education is for.

(Apologies for the slightly puckish title )

[Zoupa]

Probably doesn't help that new grads now have the same unemployment rate as non-grads.

[Syt]

While I have no doubt that Trump's policies have an effect, I would imagine that the cost is also a driving factor for lower enrollment numbers (I'm guessing young people are less willing to take out student loans these days)?

[HVC]

Further to Syt comment on enrolment numbers  Canadian universities are hurting because of lower foreign student numbers due to policy changes, I can only imagine US ones are facing similar problems.

[crazy canuck]

In Canada it is the colleges not the universities that are suffering from the drop in student visas.  And mainly in Ontario, where there were a number of degree mills.

The research universities have suffered less because people go there for the academics not the short cut to citizenship.

[The Brain]

MERGE TEH THREADS

[Grey Fox]

And there is also a lack of people going into trades. Like almost everything else Social media is to blame.

Makes too many young people think they can be successful being their own boss.

[Valmy]

And there is also a lack of people going into trades. Like almost everything else Social media is to blame.

Makes too many young people think they can be successful being their own boss.

Start your own business!!! Even though you don't know shit about fuck and have zero skills.

[Grey Fox]

Yes and the social media ad system is making getting some revenue extremely easy. It totally gives all false idea of the world.

[Josquius]

And there is also a lack of people going into trades. Like almost everything else Social media is to blame.

Makes too many young people think they can be successful being their own boss.

I wouldn't blame social media for this. In the UK Thatcher is to blame. I believe in America it tracks back some way too.
If anything social media is perhaps helping it with giving good visibility and a respectable image of trades.

[Admiral Yi]

 

[Valmy]

You have to admire his commitment to the bit.

[HVC]

You have to admire his commitment to the bit.

Imagine if thatcher retire to be a car saleswoman

[Maladict]

You have to admire his commitment to the bit.

Imagine if thatcher retire to be a car saleswoman

 

[Josquius]

It's not "a bit". A lot of the UKs problems really do track back to the smash and grab period.
It's well observed that the 1982 Industrial Training Act (amongst other things...) had a dire impact on the amount of tradesmen qualifying - make it so it's no longer mandatory to train apprentices and companies will decide not to do that, who'd have thought.