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From Inside Higher Ed: 

Boston U Suspends Admissions to Humanities and Social Science Ph.D. Programs

In an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed on condition of anonymity, the heads of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), in which all the affected programs are located, pointed to increased costs associated with the union contract that graduate student workers won after their historic, nearly seven-month strike ended in October.

According to an undated post on the university’s website, the programs not accepting Ph.D. students for next academic year are American and New England studies, anthropology, classical studies, English, history, history of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religion, Romance studies, and sociology...

In the email, Stan Sclaroff, dean of CAS, and Malika Jeffries-EL, senior associate dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, referenced the new collective bargaining agreement multiple times as the source of what they called “budgetary implications.”

The deans also suggested that the larger university (which last reported an over $3.1 billion endowment) is leaving the college largely on its own to pay the higher tab. “The provost’s office has agreed to fund the increased costs this fiscal year, including students funded on external grants,” the deans wrote. “Beyond this year, CAS must work within our existing budget to fund this transition in our doctoral programs.”

The new grad workers’ contract did give Ph.D. students a big raise: They now have a $45,000 minimum annual stipend plus 3 percent annual raises during the three-year collective bargaining agreement. That’s roughly a 70 percent increase for the lowest-paid doctoral students. The university also continues to pay for Ph.D. students’ tuition.

But the BU Graduate Workers Union had sought much more in compensation, including $17,000 more in annual stipends for Ph.D. workers. The union also wanted 7 percent annual cost-of-living adjustments or adjustments tied to the median Boston rent increase, whichever was higher.

The university continually refused these demands, leading to the longest union-authorized work stoppage among any U.S. college or university employees in at least a decade, according to the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions. (Center executive director William A. Herbert has cautioned that his organization doesn’t know the length of some strikes during that period.) Last month, the union ended the strike—accepting a deal that gave it less than it desired...

The deans wrote that the pause in admissions won’t merely give the College of Arts and Sciences more time to understand the ramifications of the union contract. They mentioned an effort, underway long before that collective bargaining agreement was signed, in which the university was exploring possibly lowering the number of students in Ph.D. programs. They wrote that “all departments and programs contributed valuable reports on how to right-size our doctoral cohorts, considering factors such as selectivity in admissions, student success, job prospects and placements, standing and reputation of the program, etc.”

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/graduate/2024/11/19/bu-suspends-admissions-humanities-other-phd-programs.