IHE: Boston U Suspends Humanities PhD Admissions

[Wahoo Redux]

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/graduate/2024/11/19/bu-suspends-admissions-humanities-other-phd-programs

Lower Deck:

The university didn't announce its decision in a news release and hasn't fully explained it, but two deans blamed a new grad workers' union contract for the cutbacks to a dozen programs including English, history and sociology.

According to an undated post on the university's website, the programs not accepting Ph.D. students for next academic year are American and New England studies, anthropology, classical studies, English, history, history of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religion, Romance studies, and sociology.

Honestly, it is probably time to shut down some PhD programs in some disciplines.

[spork]

Cheaper to hire adjuncts to teach the undergrads. Grad student labor is now unprofitable.

[waterboy]

Every time I see a story of grad unions and demands for higher pay (whether earned or not), I see the inevitable drop in possible enrollments. Money only goes so far. The needs of the many result in less opportunities down the road. This not necessarily retaliatory, just basic accounting.

[apl68]

Every time I see a story of grad unions and demands for higher pay (whether earned or not), I see the inevitable drop in possible enrollments. Money only goes so far. The needs of the many result in less opportunities down the road. This not necessarily retaliatory, just basic accounting.

I guess time will tell whether the trade-offs prove worth it in this case.

[Parasaurolophus]

I mean, they still have an $82 million surplus. I'm guessing this is mostly punitive. Given BU's ambitions, there's no way they will shutter those programs or halt admissions for more than a year. If they did, they would drop dramatically in the tables.

[Puget]

I mean, they still have an $82 million surplus. I'm guessing this is mostly punitive. Given BU's ambitions, there's no way they will shutter those programs or halt admissions for more than a year. If they did, they would drop dramatically in the tables.

I don't know about that -- it sounds like A&S is being asked to cover all increases out of its own budget, which may not not have much or any surplus-- the university is not interested in subsidizing from other divisions. And these programs are tiny compared to the overall grad enrollment at BU (primarily in the sciences), so I doubt they would have any impact on R1 status or overall ratings.

[Hibush]

I've seen the dynamic in my science department, though a bit slower. The stipend went up vigrously over about four years. It was vigorous enough (8-10% vs 4% budget) that we had to use the assistantship budget to pay for current students and therefore had a lot less than anticipated to commit to new admissions.

BU did 70% in one year. That means both the college TA budget and grant budgets will be doing a lot of reallocating other resources to assistantships next year. They can probably borrow a bit in the first year to pay all the students, and then pay that loan back the second year of forgoing admissions. With a new smaller graduate student body, they can start admitting again but with a smaller cohort size.

The departments listed probably don't support a lot of their students on grants, but other CAS departments might.

[aprof]

Where I am, RA and TA salaries have gone up over 50% in the past 10 years, not to mention tuition.  It's a lot and grant sizes have certainly not kept up.  The money has to come from somewhere.  What is happening at BU seems inevitable elsewhere, if more slowly.  I would rather see a reasonably compensated and smaller graduate workforce than a huge workforce of underpaid people, but there will be some pain points.

[apl68]

I mean, they still have an $82 million surplus. I'm guessing this is mostly punitive. Given BU's ambitions, there's no way they will shutter those programs or halt admissions for more than a year. If they did, they would drop dramatically in the tables.

I don't know about that -- it sounds like A&S is being asked to cover all increases out of its own budget, which may not not have much or any surplus-- the university is not interested in subsidizing from other divisions. And these programs are tiny compared to the overall grad enrollment at BU (primarily in the sciences), so I doubt they would have any impact on R1 status or overall ratings.

A&S' budget probably looks like a rounding error by comparison with some of the institution's STEM programs.  Yet administration probably begrudges every red cent of it.

[Puget]

I mean, they still have an $82 million surplus. I'm guessing this is mostly punitive. Given BU's ambitions, there's no way they will shutter those programs or halt admissions for more than a year. If they did, they would drop dramatically in the tables.

I don't know about that -- it sounds like A&S is being asked to cover all increases out of its own budget, which may not not have much or any surplus-- the university is not interested in subsidizing from other divisions. And these programs are tiny compared to the overall grad enrollment at BU (primarily in the sciences), so I doubt they would have any impact on R1 status or overall ratings.

A&S' budget probably looks like a rounding error by comparison with some of the institution's STEM programs.  Yet administration probably begrudges every red cent of it.

To be clear, the "S" in A&S is "sciences" -- A&S includes all the traditional science (and math) departments, only engineering and biomedical sciences would be in their own professional schools. A&S is also where all or most of the undergrads are, so A&S budgets are large, but with tight margins because they are tuition dependent. It is quite normal for universities to treat each school as a fiscal unit with its own budget. It seems extremely unlikely that they would pull money from a a professional school to subsidize A&S.

[artalot]

Yet most sports programs are heavily subsidized. And at my uni, the Law School was subsidized until 2020. The budget is a statement of your values.
That said, there really are too many PhDs, so some right sizing may be in order. Yet, without a cohort of decent size, there's no point in going. Why would you want to go to a school where you are the only person studying Revolutionary American History? You want other students you can talk to and nerd out with.

[AmLitHist]

The grad students' $45,000 + tuition (at my alma mater, that would be in the neighborhood of $20,000 for 2 semesters) isn't much less than my first FT contract. I'm always left thinking I was born either too soon or too late.

[Wahoo Redux]

Anyone think the student contracts could just be a pretext for tanking these grad programs?

Honestly, I'm surprised that there are not more calls to shutter programs that are overproducing PhDs for a continually shrinking market. 

[apl68]

The grad students' $45,000 + tuition (at my alma mater, that would be in the neighborhood of $20,000 for 2 semesters) isn't much less than my first FT contract. I'm always left thinking I was born either too soon or too late.

Shucks, $45,000 is about what I make as a library director, after 20 years on the job and 30 years' experience in the field!  Of course, Boston's cost of living being what it is, $45,000 there probably spends about like full-time at state minimum wage ($11/hour) does here.  I'm probably about as well off making $45,000 here as somebody making twice that in Boston.