BU suspends PhD admissions in humanities fields next academic year

In what it’s calling a “temporary pause,” Boston University has suspended admissions to several PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences in the 2025-26 academic year, as well as paring down the number of students in other doctorate programs.

The university said the move will ensure the “long-term sustainability” of these programs.

“This temporary pause and cohort reduction will ensure BU is able to meet its commitments to currently enrolled students and to set up its future programs for success,” the university said in a statement Tuesday.

The development was first reported by the online publication Inside Higher Ed.

The applications page for BU’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences notifies visitors that a dozen programs will not accept applications for 2025-26, including English, history, philosophy, linguistics, political science and sociology.

The decision was made “after careful consideration,” the webpage states, adding the school “intend(s) to reopen admissions for future academic years.”

In an email, BU spokesman Colin Riley said “a variety of factors went into this decision.” He cited, among other things, "job prospects and placements," as well as recommendations from a December 2023 BU task force report about the future of doctorate education at the university.

The report details challenges for the programs, including the relatively low rate of PhD grads who secure a tenure-track faculty placement, and increased levels of grad student unionization efforts nationally for more financial support.

The BU Graduate Workers Union, which has a membership of 3,000, voted to approve a new 3-year contract in October following a prolonged 7-month strike. The new agreement continues the "five-year funding guarantee" that covers the annual $64,000 tuition for PhD students. It also includes a $3,500 annual child care subsidy for households below a certain income cap, annual emergency fund of $200,000 to support grad students and transportation benefits.

The Inside Higher Ed article cites an internal Nov. 14 email circulated by BU's arts and sciences deans to administrators that "referenced the new collective bargaining agreement multiple times as the source of what they called 'budgetary implications,'' according to the story.

WBUR reached out to Stan Sclaroff, dean of the college of arts & sciences, and Malika Jeffries-EL, senior associate dean of the graduate school of arts & sciences, but did not immediately hear back.

The 2023 BU task force report cited the city's high cost of living as a systemic barrier to the traditional PhD funding model.

“Boston can be an extraordinarily challenging place to live and study, with a high cost of living that outpaces most compensation structures at the University,” the report noted.

It also urged financial constraint, saying the university “must be strategic in the funds allocated to graduate student stipends and creative in devising other potential income streams to cover graduate student wages, benefits, and tuition.”

The report added that “altering cohort size, monitoring students to ensure a reasonable time to degree, and other strategies may enhance the feasibility of this goal.”

Anthony Abraham Jack, an associate professor of higher education policy at BU's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, expressed dismay at the latest news.

“This hurts to hear especially at a time when we need to train the future producers of knowledge,” he said. “I hope it is a temporary, one-year move.”

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