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The schools doing okay financially aren’t the ones cutting these programs for cost-saving reasons. In bigger state universities eliminating programs, the cuts are largely political. School admins are worried that state legislators will target school budgets in the near future if cuts aren’t made to “useless” subjects in the humanities and social science.
In regional state universities and private liberal arts schools, however, the situation really is dire. They’re cutting to survive. The US has started to experience a decline in college enrollment. Universities have known it would happen since the late 2000s, but not in the way it has.
Big universities are growing or maintaining class sizes, which is putting tremendous pressure on the regional and liberal arts schools as the available students evaporate. It’s pushed the timeline for change up at many universities and it’s only going to get worse.
Do I feel sorry for university admins? No, they should’ve taken action sooner, with real wind-down plans for students. But we’re going to continue to see cuts to small programs for decades to come; it’s unavoidable.
The other shenanigans was that the secretary of state allowed other petitioners with the same issues to proceed on the ballot, namely marijuana and gambling referendums. The organizers should have been on their best behavior because the state was always going to selectively enforce the rules here.