Why two universities are cutting degree programs

What the enrollment cliff is

Eighteen is the traditional age at which students start college, and the number of 18-year-olds is about to fall. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) is a regional education compact. In December 2024 it projected that US high school graduates would peak at about 3.8 million in 2025 and then decline through 2041.

The decline follows a drop in births during the Great Recession, 18 years earlier. By 2041 WICHE expects about 3.4 million graduates, which is 13% fewer than the peak.

The fall is uneven. WICHE expects 38 states to lose graduates and 12 states, plus Washington, D.C., to gain them. Figure 1 shows the regional declines. The South is the exception, with growth expected.

WICHE's authors say the word cliff overstates the change. They write that "the reality will be a slower and steadier decline."

Syracuse: cuts without a money problem

Syracuse University is a private research university in Syracuse, New York, with roughly 22,000 students. On April 1st, 2026, its provost, Lois Agnew, told the campus that the university would sunset 93 academic programs.

Headlines called them majors. Only 41 of the 93 are bachelor's degrees. Another 33 are certificate programs and 19 are graduate degrees (Figure 2). Of the 93, 55 had no students enrolled. In all, 258 students, about 1.2% of the university, are in affected programs. Every one of them can finish a degree.

Syracuse says the reason is clutter, not cash. It offered about 460 degrees and certificates, against a peer average of roughly 200. Agnew wrote that 34% of its programs account for 80% of enrollments. She also wrote that "this was not a cost-cutting exercise" and that no positions have been identified for elimination.

The finances support her. Higher Ed Dive, an education news outlet, reports that enrollment at Syracuse has largely held steady over the past five years. The university has posted nine-figure budget surpluses since fiscal 2018, and its endowment was valued at $2.3 billion in fiscal 2025.

Loyola Chicago: the cliff named as a reason

Loyola University Chicago is a Jesuit university in Chicago. Since September 2025 its provost's office has run a Program Array Review, which marks each program for growth, modification or sunsetting. Decisions went out in early March 2026, and appeals ended by the end of April. In all, 71 programs were marked for sunset or modification.

The Loyola Phoenix is the university's student newspaper. It reports that Loyola had to change how it allocates resources. The causes it names are cuts in federal funding and the enrollment cliff created by the 2008 decline in birth rate.

Administrators gave a second reason. The most common thread among marked programs was low class enrollment. The dean of the Quinlan School of Business said the review "was not just an economic exercise."

Loyola has not published a full list of the programs. A vice provost said a list could confuse students, because in some cases the university closed an online version of a program and kept the residential one.

What the lists contain

At Loyola the marked programs include 13 bachelor's degrees, among them Latin and Religious Studies. They also include 15 undergraduate minors and 20 graduate certificates.

Syracuse's list reaches beyond the humanities. Higher Ed Dive says the affected fields include statistics, architecture and electrical engineering, as well as French, German, Italian and Russian.

What to watch

Closures are the harder test. Iowa Wesleyan University, a 181-year-old institution, closed in 2023. The Hechinger Report, an education news outlet, says the cause was financial losses due in part to discounts it gave out as it struggled to attract a shrinking pool of students.

Private colleges discounted their posted tuition by 56.3% on average in the 2024-25 school year, according to figures from the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

WICHE's authors say the decline calls for "a new and sustained approach to serving students" and not "a one-time adjustment."

Loyola's programs marked for modification have until the end of November to make changes. Syracuse says deans are now writing teach-out plans for the programs it is closing.