In classrooms across Cornell College, students are still rehearsing music pieces, discussing religion, and studying foreign languages. But for some, those academic paths now come with an expiration date.
The college announced Nov. 21 that eight majors — including classical studies, French and Francophone studies, German studies, religion, and three music majors — will be phased out beginning in the 2026-27 academic year. Six faculty positions also are being eliminated, with affected faculty retaining a year of salary and benefits if they choose to remain in their roles through November of 2026, according to Cornell Director of Communications Jill Hawk.
The cuts come as the college faces a $2 million budget deficit. President Jonathan Brand said the institution is projecting a balanced budget within three years.
“We’re always looking at our programming, always,” Brand said, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch. “We have to — have to pay attention to how the environment is changing, have to pay attention to what our students are telling us and what their families are telling us that they’re looking for in a college experience.”
Budget pressures behind the cuts
Cornell is not alone. Across the country, smaller colleges have restructured academic offerings in response to demographic shifts and financial strain. In Iowa, private colleges have also been closely watching debates over state tuition grants and affordability, as those policies can influence where students choose to enroll, according to reporting by the Iowa State Daily.
Colleges with fewer than 2,500 students are often considered especially vulnerable because tuition revenue makes up a large share of their budgets, leaving them more exposed to enrollment swings, according to higher education analysts from Iowa PBS.
Steve Murley, a University of Iowa professor of Educational Policy and Leadership Studies, said the financial logic behind program cuts is straightforward — and increasingly common at institutions like Cornell.
When enrollment in a major or its courses falls below what Murley called a “minimum viable threshold,” the cost per student becomes difficult to justify. The problem can compound quickly.
“You can actually start somewhat of a death spiral in a program if you wind up having courses that get canceled, because it makes it harder to be a student in that particular department,” Murley said.
Murley said the pressure is not unique to small schools. He predicted graduate programs at Iowa’s public universities will face similar scrutiny in coming years as the number of college-going students nationally continues to shrink because of a “demographic cliff” caused by fewer babies born during and after the economic recession of the late 2000’s.
“I think it’s going to be an enormous challenge across the board — large and small, public and private — over the course of the next decade,” Murley said.
Inside a phased-out major
Cornell junior Levi Thompson, a Classical Studies major, was serving on the Student Senate executive board when he heard his major would be phased out at Cornell. For him, the most immediate damage was not academic — it was the void left by a lack of information.
“The worst thing for students that I was hearing was just that they didn’t know. There was a lot of lack of communication. And when that happens, something’s going to fill the void. And so whatever’s filling the void isn’t correct,” Thompson said.
Thompson said confusion spread quickly after the Nov. 21 announcement. Students were unsure which departments would be affected, and even those outside the impacted majors felt the ripple effects.
Thompson said officials should have been clearer about what they could say and why they were withholding the rest of the information.
Despite the rocky rollout, Thompson’s own academic path has not been significantly disrupted. Cornell integrated the Classical Studies capstone requirement into his current upper-level ancient Greek course, meaning he will effectively graduate as a Classical Studies and Philosophy double major by the end of the 2026-27 academic year.
For Thompson, though, the loss still stings.
“It’s one of the oldest majors that we had on our campus — kind of the fundamental foundation of most education. And to see that kind of go away is definitely a little bitter,” he said.
Thompson noted that despite the program’s small number of declared majors, Classical Studies courses routinely filled, drawing students from across campus.
The value of what’s been cut
Programs such as music, religion, and language studies often serve roles beyond their classroom walls, supporting student organizations, campus performances, cultural events, and interdisciplinary coursework. Murley said the erosion of a liberal arts curriculum tends to be gradual — and deceptively easy to overlook at first.
“It’s tough to see at the beginning, because there’s still so many offerings out there that losing one or two isn’t an enormous problem. But give that four or five or 10 years, and you see first classes go away, then perhaps departments go away,” Murley said. “That can be a pretty substantial change in the experience that a student has.”
As college has become more expensive, students have increasingly weighed the return on investment of their degree — a shift that has benefited STEM and business programs at the expense of the humanities. Murley said that pressure comes largely from students themselves, not just institutions.
He described a pattern he sees regularly: Students pairing a passion-driven major with a more employable one as a hedge.
Thompson, who plans to attend law school after graduation, said fewer opportunities to study the humanities hurt everyone — whether or not students take advantage of them directly.
A loss felt beyond campus
The cuts carry consequences that extend well beyond Cornell’s hilltop campus. Small colleges around Iowa are often the economic and cultural centers of their communities.
“If you just drive down the road to Mount Pleasant and see the impact of the demise of Iowa Wesleyan on the community, it’s very evident,” Murley said.
Iowa Wesleyan University closed at the end of the 2023 academic year due to a combination of financial challenges, including tuition and fee increases, failed grants, inability to meet the enrollment target, and increased debt to the USDA, totaling $26.1 million, The Gazette reported.
Murley noted such closures affect not just employment, but the cultural fabric of a place — the demand for arts, retail and civic life that a college campus generates.
What comes next
Students in affected programs will receive individual teach-out plans, which allow Cornell to honor commitments to current students while closing future enrollment. But Thompson acknowledged that for some students, those plans have not fully replaced what they came to Cornell hoping to find.
Hawk said that after a reconfiguration, the Spanish major will not be eliminated as previously announced. Classical Studies, French and Francophone Studies, German Studies, Religion, and three music majors will no longer exist at Cornell.
“Anyone who is still interested in declaring a course of study in one of these eliminated majors is welcome to pursue Cornell’s individualized major, where they will work with faculty to identify classes they can take on campus or through Cornell’s online partner program,” said Hawk.
Classes continue and students graduate while the future of humanities majors remain unclear.
Murley said colleges facing these pressures may need to fundamentally reimagine their identities rather than treat each round of cuts as a one-time fix. He suggested some small schools may survive by anchoring around high-demand programs — such as nursing or education — and using that enrollment to cross-subsidize smaller departments.
“Is that a survival mechanism that actually allows us to not just exist, but maybe thrive, maybe flourish? I think you’re going to see some of our small colleges in Iowa start to explore what that might look like,” he said.