Today the Washington Post is reporting that Black Studies departments across the country are shrinking. The Post doesn't definitively blame this on any one reason but suggests a combination of factors are at play. One of them is the Trump administration's pushback against DEI. But the more significant reason seems to be low enrollment. It's difficult to run an entire department for a handful of students.
U.S. colleges are increasingly slashing their African American studies and related programs, citing low enrollment and limited funding, at a time when the federal government is exerting intense pressure to end racial diversity efforts.
Some academics blame politics, pointing out that Republicans and the Trump administration have taken aim at scholarships, admissions policies and other efforts to boost diversity. At least a dozen schools, including private colleges and public flagship universities, have scaled back Black, African or African American studies programs since Trump signed an executive order targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a Washington Post review found.
“Politics is the engine, not a factor,” said Jafari Sinclaire Allen, director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University...
“They are not cutting at the fringe,” said Allen, who is also a professor of African American and African diaspora studies at Columbia. “They are striking the foundations.”
Who are they?
It's not clear and that may be because there isn't a they out there making cuts based on politics. Instead, various schools may be responding to market signals.
Enrollment in the programs has been falling in recent years, data shows.
For three straight years, students received fewer than 700 degrees in African American studies nationally, the lowest level in the last two decades, according to an analysis of federal data through 2025 by a researcher at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. That’s despite the fact that the number of schools offering degree programs has gradually risen during the same span.
The University of North Texas is offered as an example. Facing a $45 million budget shortfall, the school is consolidating a bunch of departments with low enrollment to save money. They include "undergraduate minors in Africana studies, Asian studies, Mexican American studies, LGBTQ studies, women’s and gender studies." Basically the whole grievance studies wing of academia is not paying for itself.
...the University of Iowa noted that there were only nine students in the bachelor’s program for African American studies when it decided to eliminate the major. It also closed its African American studies program.
In a few cases, Florida and North Carolina, laws against identity politics may have played a role in shrinking departments but that seems to be a minority of those doing so. Naturually, people running these departments like the idea that they are brave truth-tellers living in a hostile environment.
Erica R. Edwards, chair of Black studies at Yale University, said such programs have become a target because “the field is unapologetic in its critiques of fascism, antiblackness, sexism and antitransness, and antiimmigration.”
As one analyst for the Manhattan Institute points out, there's a bit of irony in claiming you're unapologetic in your politics while simultaneously claiming to be a victim of politics.
“It’s hypocritical for department chairs to deride the cuts as political when they’re the ones who have allowed their departments to become highly politicized hotbeds of scholar-activism,” Arnold said.
What's most surprising about this story may be the commenters. Washington Post commenters tend to be pretty far left and eager to jump on any bandwagon that involves blaming the Trump administration. But in this case, quite a few people seem to think these departments are junk and a waste of money. Here's the top comment:
"For three straight years, students received fewer than 700 degrees in African American studies nationally, the lowest level in the last two decades"
That tells you there really is no demand for such majors in the workforce. No reason to accumulate debt for a worthless degree.
Another one:
The only job you'll get with a degree in African Studies is a job teaching African Studies.
Not a lot of jobs out there. Let's combine a few of these into bullet points:
- Seems like a lot of these boutique programs could be consolidated into a "Department of Grievance Studies".
- I was not even aware there ever was an undergrad major in African American Studies. What better way to saddle yourself with a 25 year student loan debt than a college major preparing oneself to manage a Dollar Store.
- A degree in Black Studies sounds like a recipe for having a large student loan debt to pay off while you look for work as a sign turner at a paving company.
- Ethnic and Gender Studies aka Pre-Barista.
- You named it in the article - low enrollment. Students have finally tumbled to the fact that business owners do not want to hire someone who majored in victimhood. This is not what they want to bring into the workplace.
- I can understand perhaps taking one class in African American studies, but who would actually choose this as a major course of study? I can't imagine hiring someone that threw away 4 years of college on something with no value in the business world.
Even people who self-identify as anti-Trump liberals think these majors are useless.
A lot of ethnic studies programs began because universities either wanted to satisfy certain faculty demographic goals or in response to demands by student protesters. The programs themselves don't really prepare anyone for the job market unless they want to work in job the specifically deals with disputes among demographic groups (e.g. DEI, etc).
While I wouldn't vote for Trump if my life depended on it, the Trump regime's criticism of DEI programs is fundamentally correct. We can admit our flaws and try to correct them but we should also focus more on what unifies rather than what divides.
Bottom line: It's not often I'm surprised by Post commenters, who are a uniquely awful bunch in my experience, but it seems almost everyone agrees that this is a waste of time and money as a major and no one is sad about seeing these grievance studies majors go.
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