Boston University announced, as of Thursday, multiple doctoral degree programs in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will not be accepting applications for the 2025-26 academic year, according to BU Spokesperson Colin Riley.
Graduate admissions into anthropology, history, sociology and political science departments will be paused. STEM programs, with the exception of the economics doctoral program, will accept applications at a reduced rate.
“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,” Riley wrote in an email.
According to Riley, the decision is part of the University’s “commitment to re-envision these programs to allow for their long-term sustainability.”
In an email to GRS administrators obtained by The Daily Free Press, GRS Dean Stan Sclaroff and GRS Senior Associate Dean Malika Jeffries-El wrote that current enrollment levels are “financially unsustainable,” which has caused the school to pause “non-grant-funded doctoral programs.”
“This pause and reduction of entering cohorts will ensure that we have the financial resources available to honor the five-year funding commitments we have made to our currently enrolled doctoral students,” they wrote.
Currently, doctoral students on the Charles River Campus are guaranteed full funding and stipend support for five years, according to BU’s Graduate Education Ph.D. Funding webpage.
Sclaroff and Jeffries-El stated the decision was influenced by the BU Graduate Workers Union’s collective bargaining agreement, which was ratified in October, and recommendations of the Task Force on the Future of Ph.D. Education at BU, which was established in spring 2022. The task force was created to “consider several critical questions” to improve the University’s handling of doctoral education, according to the task force webpage.
BUGWU released a statement on Instagram about the pause, comparing the decision to a “massive layoff.”
“Departments would have to choose between reducing their cohort sizes or taking in graduate students only in alternate years,” the statement said. “That choice has been taken away with little warning.”
According to the BUGWU statement, staff were told in a recent Faculty Council meeting that future cohorts would need to reduce in size by “30-50%.”
BUGWU member and third-year Ph.D. student Alex Kane said there was a “broad sense of outrage within the union” about the decision.
“The University never communicated broadly to the graduate student body, the undergraduate student body about this decision,” Kane said. “It was only really confirmed by the FAQ page on the graduate admissions website.”
Third-year doctoral candidate and BUGWU member Meiya Sparks Lin said she thinks current doctoral students will be adversely affected by a reduction in graduate students.
“I don’t know if they’re going to completely shut down those positions, increase class sizes or hire underpaid temporary staff to replace us,” Lin said. “They’re reducing our teaching power, our labor power on campus so that we won’t be as strong.”
Lin said she did not believe the task force findings or the collective bargaining agreement made between the union and the University were part of the reasoning behind the pause in admissions.
“They’re blaming both the graduate workers strike and a task force, which it’s clear that it can’t be necessarily both,” Lin said. “This is an excuse for BU doing what it’s wanted to do for a long time, which is implement austerity measures, maximize profit and do so at the expense of the quality of education.”
It is currently unknown how the reduction in doctoral programs will affect professors and teaching assistants in undergraduate courses.
This is a developing story and will be updated. If you have an experience you’d like to share — or know of someone who might have — please reach out to The Daily Free Press at investigations@dailyfreepress.com.
