During a meeting with Miami University's board of trustees on Thursday, Provost and Executive Director of Academic Affairs Elizabeth Mullenix shared details about the university's ongoing plan to shrink the humanities.
Before the start of the 2023 fall semester, Mullenix informed faculty about Miami's "new vision" that would require cuts and consolidation of several liberal arts degree programs.
The university received some pushback from students and staff following the announcement, but moved forward with its plan, involving representatives from various programs in the decision-making process.
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While there are still unknowns, Mullenix says Miami will eliminate its Latin American Studies major and consolidate its foreign language degree programs.
French, Italian, German, Russian, and East Asian language majors will all be combined into a new World Languages and Culture degree.
Miami's Department of Geography will shift its focus to climate change and sustainability.
These changes are motivated by Miami University's effort to increase enrollment by moving resources away from degrees with fewer students and shifting them to more popular majors like finance, marketing, and psychology, which have thousands of students each. Just over 4,000 new students enrolled in 2023, down slightly from 2021 and 2022.
A national trend
The provost says Miami isn't alone in making these changes. A growing list of colleges nationwide are making similar cuts — in Ohio alone, numerous schools have plans to nix several academic programs. Just last week, Wright State University and the University of Toledo each announced the elimination of dozens of degrees, many of them in the liberal arts.
RELATED: Ohio universities keep cutting programs — what’s the deal?
"The decline in majors in humanities over the last decade is a national trend. Miami is not out of line with that trend at all," Mullenix told the board of trustees. "We aren't greater, we aren't lesser, it's very much in keeping with what's happening all over the nation,"
Details about the fate of other humanities programs like Art History, Social Justice Studies, Gender Studies, and others remain to be seen as Miami continues to lay out its plan.
Miami's full board of trustees will meet again in executive session Friday morning. The next set of public meetings will be held in May during the school's final exam week.
