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The end of the Humboldtian ideal at Indiana University, Bloomington

Brian Leiter

This is pretty dramatic:

Indiana University Bloomington is suspending or eliminating more than 100 academic programs across a wide range of disciplines ahead of the 2026-27 academic year. The programs are on a list from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education released on a PDF from the June 30, 2025 meeting.

Universities across Indiana are eliminating degree programs due to House Enrolled Act 1001—2025’s Bill Section #248 added, effective July 1, 2025.

https://www.in.gov/che/files/HEA1001-Graduate-Thresholds-CHE-Initial-Guidance-and-FAQ_V1-6.13.25.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

The changes, affect undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs and touch nearly every corner of the university — from the arts and humanities to science, education, public health, and languages.

At least 43 undergraduate degree programs will be suspended with plans to eliminate or merge them, including the Bachelor of Arts in African American and African Diaspora Studies, Art History, Comparative Literature, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, French, Gender Studies, and Spanish. Several Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Fine Arts programs are also impacted, including programs in Ballet, Cognitive Science, and Environmental Geoscience.

Graduate and professional degrees are also on the chopping block. Multiple master’s and doctoral programs — including Ph.D. tracks in Art History, Comparative Literature, Astrophysics, French, Japanese, and Gender Studies — will be phased out or consolidated. A number of education and public health degrees will also be discontinued….

The cuts also come after the appointment of a new Board of Trustees majority, aligned with Indiana’s Republican Gov. Mike Braun, which has called for more “practical” degrees with workforce outcomes.

No Bildung for Governor Braun, just churn out the credentialed workers!

The full list of targetted programs at all public Indiana universities is here.  Philosophy is not tagetted at Bloomington (but many other core humanitic fields, including classics, are), but is being cut elsewhere.  

What a disaster.  Comments are open for those who may have more information.

(Thanks to Sam Elgin for the pointer.)

 

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4 responses to “The end of the Humboldtian ideal at Indiana University, Bloomington”

  1. Whitney Schwab

    It seems to me that a major (but certainly not the only) terrible feature of this mindset about education is: if at age 22 (or, whenever) society (industry, whatever) needs people with skills/knowledge/etc X, we'll get more people with higher degrees of X if we just push the focus on X earlier and earlier in the educational process. Three questions: (1) am I right that that's a feature; (2) am I right that it's terrible (indeed, probably, self-undermining); (3) where on earth does it come from/when did it originate?

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  2. Dean C. Rowan

    The link in the post's final quoted paragraph to "practical" leads to an Indianapolis Star piece hosted at Yahoo! News in which the word "practical" doesn't appear. Rather, the head of the Commission, Chris Lowery, is quoted as saying that the Commission wants "to ensure the programs [the institutions are] offering are responsive to student demand and fit the needs of Indiana’s evolving economy…" (Ironically, Lowery holds the degree of Bachelor of Science in Public Affairs from Indiana University, one of the programs the University "voluntarily" opted to "Suspend (with Teach-Out toward Elimination)/Written
    Commitment to Merge/Consolidate the Program before AY26-27.)" To me, "practical" sounds more like what in legal education we call "experiential" education, a mode of instruction "demanded" largely by employer law firms, and not necessarily by consuming students. As I see it, law firms are too lazy and greedy to cultivate and adapt the skills of newly minted lawyers into their own practices. Rather, they want fresh graduates who are vaguely "practice ready" to hit the ground running as new firm associates. I am not surprised that Lowery, who was an aide to Sen. Dan Quayle, tries to spin the matter as a function of student demand.

    It's also worth noting that the 408 affected programs were "voluntarily" offered up for suspension, elimination, or merger. As the IndyStar story mentions, it's likely that now that we're in FY26, the state law will require further action against additional programs that are already "under threshold" according to the law.

    The Brauns and Lowerys of the world are just not intellectually curious people.

    Reply
  3. Brian

    No problem , AI will do all of the thinking for you.

    Reply
  4. Anon Hoosier

    The state-mandated changes in Indiana are indeed bad news. But the claim, frequently made news coverage of the situation, that a vast number of academic programs are being "cut" is, at least in IUB's case, somewhat misleading. IUB's response to the relevant budget bill has been to merge most majors that fall bellow the threshold under new, umbrella majors. For example, instead of an independent classics major, there will be a larger major with an option to concentrate in classics, where the requirements for that concentration will, I anticipate, be more or less the same as those of a traditional classics major. At least for now, IUB's academic offerings will not be scaled back as dramatically as the linked article might suggest.

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