Why Colleges Are Cutting So Many Majors at Once — and What Families Can Do Now
The subject line arrived during dessert: “An update regarding the BFA in Musical Theatre.”
My daughter Lila, seventeen, pushed her bowl of melted ice cream aside and opened it on her laptop. The program she had spent three months preparing to apply to was suspended. No new majors. No audition slots. No explanation longer than two sentences about budget and enrollment.
“Can they just do that?” she asked.
I looked at the half-empty mug in front of her, the printed college list covered in pink highlighter, the sticky note beside her keyboard that said “prescreen video due Nov 1.”
“They can,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
That was only one school. Then, over ten days in October, three colleges announced a combined 113 program cuts. Some were in the arts. Others were in education, languages, communications, and smaller technical fields. I had always pictured a college eliminating a major the way a school might retire a club—slowly, after long meetings, one program at a time. This felt faster and less personal, like a spreadsheet decision arriving in inboxes all at once.
For Lila, it did not feel like a spreadsheet. It felt like a door closing before she had even knocked.
The next morning she was quiet in the car. At a red light, she said, “Maybe I shouldn’t do theater at all.”
I almost said the usual parent things: Don’t worry. It’ll work out. You can always do something else. But none of that matched what she was facing. A teenager’s college plan is not just a list of classes. It is a story they tell about who they are becoming. When a major disappears overnight, that story can feel ridiculous to them.
So I said, “The program closing is not a verdict on you. It also doesn’t mean theater is gone. It means we need better information and a wider list.”
That has become our small, practical approach: less panic, fewer slogans, more checking.
At home, we set up a twenty-minute Wednesday college folder. Not an all-night marathon, not constant phone checking. Twenty minutes, laptop on the kitchen table, a glass of water nearby. During that time, Lila emails admissions or checks the college’s current catalog. Outside that time, we try not to discuss application news.
The questions are simple, but they have to be asked in writing:
“Is this major accepting new students for next fall?”
“Are the required courses offered every year, or only every other year?”
“Are tenure-line faculty positions in the department filled or frozen?”
“If the program is later suspended, what options are available to students already enrolled?”
A tour guide’s enthusiasm is useful, but it is not a guarantee. A dated catalog page or an admissions email is more useful. Lila now saves PDFs of program pages and course requirements because webpages can change between application and acceptance.
Her guidance counselor, Mr. Brent, also suggested looking at each college through what he called a “shift test.” If the first major closes, what else at the same school could reasonably connect to it? For Lila, that meant looking beyond a BFA in musical theater to a BA in theater, communications, media production, arts administration, or education. We were not abandoning her goal. We were noticing which doors were nearby.
At first she resisted. “That feels like giving up.”
“It’s only giving up if you pretend those paths are the same,” I said. “They’re different. But they can still use your voice, your rehearsal habits, and your ability to stand in front of people.”
That distinction mattered. Teenagers often hear “backup plan” as “I don’t believe in you.” A related pathway sounds more like, “I believe enough in your interest to help you protect it.”
Her theater teacher, Ms. Rivera, put it even more plainly in class after two students came in worried about program cuts. She wrote three questions on the board: Do they stage productions? Who teaches the acting and stage-management courses? Can a student graduate in eight semesters if courses are cut? Then she told them to look at community colleges and transfer pathways too. A student does not have to arrive at a four-year school with a four-year guarantee written in stone, but they should know whether the courses they need will actually exist.
The broader pattern is not mysterious. Colleges are dealing with uneven enrollment, rising costs, pressure to emphasize employment outcomes, and smaller departments that are expensive to run. Some schools are protecting large majors and trimming anything with low graduates. That can make sense on an institutional budget. It can also be jarring for a student who fell in love with a specific program on a website.
The developmental piece is easy for adults to miss. Older teenagers can sound very sophisticated when they discuss reach schools and merit aid, but most are still learning to hold multiple possible futures at once. A single canceled program can feel like proof that their ambitions are unrealistic. They may become irritable, withdraw, or suddenly claim they do not care about college at all. That behavior is often less about defiance than about protecting themselves from disappointment.
When that happens, I have learned not to answer the first dramatic statement. If Lila says, “This is stupid, I’m not applying anywhere,” I do not debate her. I say, “You sound burned out. Close the laptop. We can do one thing tomorrow.” The one thing might be adding two schools to the list, saving a catalog PDF, or sending one email. Small tasks reduce the feeling that the whole system is moving while she stands still.
We also changed how we talk about the list. She no longer has “dream schools” in our house. She has schools with programs, prices, and risks. Some have strong theater departments but uncertain funding. Others have less famous programs but stable general education requirements and lower debt. That may sound unromantic, but it gives her a clearer view of what she is actually choosing.
For current college students, the calculation is slightly different. They should ask about a “teach-out” plan, which explains how enrolled students can finish the major if it is eliminated. They should also keep syllabi, transcripts, and transfer equivalencies in one place. No student wants to think about their department closing, but having those documents makes an unexpected transfer much less chaotic.
For younger high school families, the lesson is not to avoid the arts or humanities. It is to ask how a field lives inside an institution. A major title alone tells you very little. Look at faculty lines, course frequency, production budgets, internship placements, and whether nonmajors can participate. A smaller program can be wonderful, but it is more vulnerable when budgets tighten.
Lila’s revised list now has four BFA programs, three BA theater tracks, and two communications options. She still gets anxious when a college email appears, and she still marks uncertain schools with a yellow triangle in her spreadsheet. One program she liked recently lost a faculty member, so she moved it from “likely” to “wait and see.” It is not a perfect system.
Last night she practiced her audition song in her bedroom while I folded laundry downstairs. Some notes were too quiet; others were clear enough that I stopped folding and listened. I do not know which college will accept her, or which programs will still exist four years from now. Nobody does.
But Wednesday at seven, the folder comes out again. Twenty minutes. Two questions. One next step. That is enough for this week.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why Colleges Are Cutting So Many Majors at Once — and What Families Can Do Now