One of the laws requires public colleges and universities to eliminate programs with low numbers of degrees averaged over a three-year period.
The cutoff is 15 graduates for a bachelor’s degree, seven for a master’s and three for a doctorate.
Based on
federal data from 2023,
around 200 BA, MA and PhD programs at IU Bloomington fell short. WFIU/WTIU News does not have data for degrees conferred in the two years since and IU has not commented on programs at risk.
So far, most faculty don’t know what to expect. President-elect of the Bloomington Faculty Council Heather Akou said she hasn’t heard anything from the university but that it’s “aggressively” moving to get in line with the law.
“There are going to be big changes for this university, and the pace at which this is being pushed through is not designed for positive outcomes,” she said. “I have to say that my faculty colleagues are in panic to a degree that I have never seen before.”
Most of the degrees with low numbers of recipients are in the humanities and languages. Jewish Studies, Classical Studies and multiple language departments could lose their main offerings.
From 2020 to 2022, IU Bloomington conferred more humanities doctorates than any other university in the country,
according to data from Carnegie Classifications. It also
ranks first for number of languages taught, for now.
New STEM programs
in areas deemed critical to the state also failed to reach the threshold in 2022-23. Those included artificial intelligence, microbiology and cyber operations and warfare.