Philosophy is one of 10 undergraduate majors that administrators at Manhattan College, a Catholic college in New York, have proposed eliminating.

According to The Quadrangle, college president Milo Riverso announced in an email last month: “To better align our resources with these efforts, we have made the decision to eliminate a limited number of programs with low enrollments. All students currently enrolled in an affected program will be supported to graduate on-time.”

The programs to be cut are:

Undergraduate Majors: art history, Camino, E3MC, environmental studies, French, labor studies, nuclear medicine technology, philosophy, religious studies, urban studies.

Undergraduate Minors/Concentrations: Arabic, theater, Chinese, critical race and ethnicity studies, cultural anthropology, digital arts and humanities, film studies, Italian, Japanese, medieval studies, social services, women and gender studies, ethics.

Graduate Programs: mathematics and data analytics, school building leadership, accounting.

Regarding philosophy specifically, The Quadrangle reports that the major was growing in size and is part of a core curriculum for all liberal arts students:

“Philosophy is one of the strongest, fastest-growing programs at Manhattan College,” an anonymous faculty member confirmed. “Students seek out Catholic colleges for their training in religion, philosophy, and ethics. Even as the college as a whole has lower enrollment, we have over 20% more students taking philosophy classes this year than last year. We are one of the only programs to have zero low-enrolled courses and to have met every class size metric.”

Philosophy is yet another program that will not save the college money to take off of the roster.

“Closing the philosophy major and minor does not save any money,” the faculty member wrote in an email. “We teach so many required classes, like Roots, Ethics, Logic, Critical Thinking, and Faith and Reason. Enough classes will still run for there to be a major or minor—students will just be banned from having that degree on their diploma and résumé and the benefits that come from an official program, such as membership in the national honor society.”

Reportedly, the cuts were proposed “without consulting the curriculum committees or faculty chairs.”

(via Joel Pust)

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