Boston University suspends Ph.D. admissions in humanities

Boston University has suspended admissions to humanities and social science Ph.D. programs for next year after agreeing to a new graduate student workers union contract with massive pay increases.

A post on the university website confirmed that the suspensions include American and New England studies, anthropology, classical studies, English, history, history of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religion, Romance studies, and sociology.

“As part of our ongoing review of our doctoral programs, the University has paused admissions to several Ph.D. programs and will reduce the cohort sizes of other programs for the 25-26 academic year,” Colin Riley, BU’s executive director of media relations, said in a statement to The Washington Times. “These actions are part of Boston University’s commitment to re-envision these programs to allow for their long-term sustainability.”

Mr. Riley said the program review began in 2022.

The enrollment freeze comes after doctoral students working as part-time instructors — typically teaching a single course as part of their degree requirements — won a 70% pay increase from the university in a seven-month strike that ended in October with their first unionized contract. 

The three-year collective bargaining agreement will give Ph.D. students a minimum annual stipend of $45,000 with a 3% yearly raise, expanded health care for dependents, free dental care, childcare subsidies, 14 weeks of paid parental leave and subsidized public transit.

Peter Wood, a former BU associate provost who taught in the school’s graduate anthropology program until 2005, called these numbers the “prime factor” in freezing admissions to his former department.

“This must add up to an enormous bill, and it does not even include the free tuition that many of the graduate students enjoy,” Mr. Wood told The Times. 

He noted that the university did not also freeze enrollment in lucrative science, technology, engineering or math programs — or in degrees like African studies and social work — which he said attract international students who pay full tuition without relying on loans. 

“What this tells me is that BU administration has shuttered admissions in the programs that it sees as expensive luxuries,” said Mr. Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars.

Colleges nationwide have trimmed liberal arts programs associated with low-paying careers to offset falling enrollments and rising operating costs since the pandemic.

In fall 2023, 490 fewer people entered BU undergraduate programs as freshmen than the year before, costing the university millions of dollars in expected four-year tuition revenues. 

At the same time, a growing number of undergraduate and graduate students have unionized on college campuses under the Biden-Harris administration, demanding increased compensation to cover soaring living costs.

In an email leaked anonymously to the trade publication Insider Higher Ed, BU College of Arts and Sciences dean Stan Sclaroff and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Malika Jeffries-EL blamed the new union contract for increasing program expenses beyond their budget constraints.

“It would be financially unsustainable to move forward with the cohort sizes discussed earlier this fall,” the deans wrote in the email, which Inside Higher Ed reported Tuesday. 

According to higher education insiders, it should be no surprise that BU followed up its agreement to pay student workers more with sweeping cuts to low-performing programs.

“This act of stopping admissions could be read as retribution,” said Tim Cain, a University of Georgia professor of higher education. “There are concerns in some academic fields about the large number of PhD students produced relative to the small number of tenure-line jobs in those fields. Abruptly ending admissions, though, seems very different than that.” 

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a liberal arts advocacy group, also lamented BU’s decision.

“While it is likely unfair to place the blame solely on this new union contract, it is likely to have had an effect,” said  Kyle Beltramini, an ACTA policy research fellow. “Departmental and programmatic budgets are often long-term and can be vulnerable to unforeseen, external changes.”  

Others saw the admissions freeze as a positive development.

Gary Stocker, the founder of College Viability, which evaluates universities’ financial stability, called BU’s decision a “market adjustment” to increased payroll expenses.

”That gushing sound you hear is cold water being poured on the unionization efforts across college campuses throughout the United States,” said Mr. Stocker, a former chief of staff at private Westminster College in Missouri. “BU leaders are probably getting quiet admiration from their peers across the country for their response to the union vote.”

The National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency overseeing private employer labor relations, issued several landmark rulings under the Obama and Biden administrations recognizing student organizing efforts.

Those rulings have gradually redefined college students as employees of their institutions and not merely clients.

Under the first Trump administration, several anti-union appointments to the NLRB briefly reversed that trend.

William Herbert, director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, said BU’s decision to suspend enrollment should only have come “after lengthy study and deliberations.”

“Traditionally, decisions to end programs in higher education are decided through shared governance in which faculty play an important part,” Mr. Herbert said in an email.

This article was first published by the Washington Times on November 22, 2024.