Straws in the Wind - Part 210

 From the NY Times: ...The New School in New York City is facing a financial crisis and a dramatic restructuring that some professors and students fear will lead to the collapse of its liberal arts and social science programs, even as its president vows the plan will lead to a stronger university. An unexpected drop in enrollment this fall raised the stakes, with leadership warning that the university will not be able to pay its bills by June if things don’t change. Staring down a projected $48 million operating deficit for this fiscal year, administrators have started to implement a plan to close, overhaul or merge about 30 academic programs or majors; pause nearly all admissions to doctoral programs; and offer buyouts or early retirement to what professors say is about 40 percent of the full-time faculty.

At a protest in December, dozens of professors and students marched against the cuts, which some warned would send the New School into a death spiral by undermining its reputation and sparking more reductions in enrollment. But Joel Towers, the New School’s president and leader of the restructuring effort, argues that a transformed university will emerge on the other side of the pain, one that is more relevant and interdisciplinary, drawing on the university’s strengths in the liberal arts, performance, and art and design...

The crisis at the New School reflects the enormous pressures facing higher education across the United States at a time of ballooning costs, federal policies limiting research grants and international enrollment and decreased student interest in the liberal arts. But the problems are particularly acute at the New School, which has run at a roughly $30 million a year deficit for the last two years even though it charges undergraduates top-dollar tuition. The proposed cuts are designed to put the New School, which includes the Parsons School of Design, the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, the College of Performing Arts and the New School for Social Research, back on firm financial footing.

Though the New School relies on international students to help pay its bills, about 280 fewer of those students enrolled this fall compared with the year before, as the impact of new federal policies on student visas hit. Domestic enrollment also fell slightly. At a school with an estimated total annual cost of $88,000 for a full-time undergraduate student living on campus, the difference added up...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/nyregion/new-school-nyc-cuts.html.