Amid widespread budget deficits, several top universities have suspended admissions to their art history graduate programs or cut the size of the cohorts they will admit, along with modifications to other humanities concentrations. Boston University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and Princeton University are among those institutions seeing changes.
The cutbacks come in the context of a widely discussed crisis in higher education. Philadelphia-based public radio station WHYY reported in November that both public and private colleges and universities are facing “enormous challenges,” including declines in state and federal funding, reductions in the numbers of foreign students owing to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and a sharp decline in the number of college-aged students due to demographic trends.
Humanities programs at numerous universities are facing cutbacks. In one particularly notable example, Syracuse University in Upstate New York paused admission for 20 undergraduate majors, including fine art and digital humanities, while launching a new Center for the Creator Economy, which will support podcasters, streamers, and influencers.
The changes to humanities programs also come as the Trump administration has targeted elite US universities, not only withholding federal research grants, accusing schools of harboring antisemitism, and attacking what the president calls illegal efforts toward diversity, equity, and inclusion, but also hiking taxes on their endowments.
In an undated post regarding admissions to graduate arts and sciences programs for the 2026–27 academic year, Boston University indicated that the history of art and architecture program was not admitting candidates, along with American studies, anthropology, religion, and romance studies programs. In November 2024, meanwhile, the school had already indicated that its department of the history of art and architecture would not accept Ph.D. students for the next academic year, according to a report from Inside Higher Education. In an email obtained by the publication, the heads of the College of Arts and Sciences, which includes the art history department, “pointed to increased costs associated with the union contract that graduate student workers won after their historic, nearly seven-month strike ended in October.”
Boston University graduate worker students strike for fair pay, better healthcare coverage, and stronger benefits, 2024.
Photo Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
But Inside Higher Education noted that there was an effort already underway before the union contract, as noted in an email obtained from deans, to “right-size” doctoral cohorts, “considering such factors as selectivity in admissions, student success, job prospects and placements, standing and reputation of the program, etc.”
ARTnews’s emails to the university’s public relations department, art history graduate department, and director of art history graduate programs were not immediately answered.
The University of Chicago’s arts and humanities division accepted a smaller cohort in the art history department as well as six other departments for 2026–27, according to an email obtained by Inside Higher Education and the Chicago Tribune. Other departments were also expected to pause admissions, according to the email, from arts and humanities dean Deborah Nelson. The school faces a $160 million deficit in fiscal year 2025, down from $288 million in fiscal year 2024, the school noted in November. Neither Nelson nor the art history department chair answered ARTnews emails requesting details.
The Harvard Crimson reported in October that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences would cut the number of Ph.D. student admissions in the arts and humanities division, which includes the department of the history of art and architecture, by about 60 percent for the next two years. Some departments were preparing for drastic decreases in their Ph.D. student numbers, reported the student paper, based on interviews with five faculty members and emails obtained by reporters. Departments that would only have one new Ph.D. seat after the reductions would not be allowed to admit any new students, according to one faculty member.
Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean Hopi E. Hoekstra had announced in September that the school would admit Ph.D. students at “significantly reduced levels.” Hoekstra cited uncertainty around research funding and an increase to the endowment tax as “sources of financial pressure.” The Crimson previously noted that in its financial report for the 2025 fiscal year, the university had indicated an operating loss of $113 million, its first budget deficit since 2020, amid disruptions to federal funding.
ARTnews’s emails to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the university’s media relations department asking how the cuts would affect the department of the history of art and architecture were not answered by time of publication.
At Princeton University, meanwhile, the Daily Princetonian reported in November that most graduate program cohorts would see a “modest reduction” in the current admission cycle and that all departments and academic units had been directed to cut their budgets by 5–10 percent in the wake of cuts in federal research funding amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. An ARTnews email inquiring about how the department was affected, sent to the head of the department of art and archaeology, was not answered by time of publication.
