TJ Walker explains Syracuse University's decision to cut 84 programs, 55 with no majors. He frames it as normal but uses it to expose a larger crisis: tuition at private nonprofits now averages $45,000 a year, forcing students to treat college as a financial investment rather than intellectual exploration. The cuts are mathematically justified but reflect how higher education has become a luxury good.
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Ultimize. Syracuse University announced it's dropping 84 academic programs and pausing enrollment in 9 more, including majors like Classics, Classical Civilization, German, Italian, Ceramics, Jewelry and Metalsmithing, Sculpture, Painting, and Art Video. And here's the part people need to hear before they start fainting into a tote bag. No students were majoring in 55 of the programs being closed. So let's begin with reality. If nobody's majoring in a program, that's not exactly the educational equivalent of closing the emergency room. This is more like a restaurant quietly taking liver mousse off the menu because nobody's ordered it since the Clinton administration. Universities change curricula all the time. That's what learning is. Knowledge changes, markets change, student interests change, the economy changes. So on one level, this is completely normal. And honestly, some of these majors sound so obscure they almost feel like dares. Hey, Mom, Dad, great news! I decided to spend a quarter of a million dollars majoring in metalsmithing. Okay, that is not a major, that's an Etsy shop with a dean. Now, Before the humanities crowd starts throwing softcover copies of Plato at me, which, by the way, I own one, let me say this clearly. I'm not against philosophy. I'm not against classics. I'm not against critical thinking. I personally majored in philosophy in college. I have a degree in philosophy. And we live in a world right now where the ability to detect nonsense is more important than ever. So I'm glad I majored in philosophy and frankly use it every day. Now, if more people had studied logic, we might not have half the country getting conned every day by political frauds, wellness frauds, crypto frauds, and LinkedIn influencers who write like they were assembled in a lab from leftover TED Talks. So yes, the world needs critical thinking. The world needs history. The world needs people who can recognize when someone is BSing them. But here's the problem. College has become so obscenely expensive that it's no longer enough to say study what you love and the universe will provide. The universe does not provide. The universe sends invoices. That's the real story here. Not that Syracuse is cutting ceramics or Italian. The real story is that college has become so expensive that majors now have to survive a return on investment conversation whether anyone likes it or not. 50 years ago, you can major in almost anything, graduate, drift around a little, become a hairstylist or a bartender or a real estate agent, and if you didn't make a fortune, fine. You also didn't have a mortgage-sized student loan stapled to your face. But now, if you borrow tens of thousands of dollars for a degree that has no realistic earning path, that's not quirky anymore. That is financial self-harm with school colors, and the numbers are brutal. According to the College Board, the average sticker price tuition and fees for an in-state student at a public 4-year college in 2025-2026, $11,950. At a private nonprofit 4-year college, the average sticker price is $45,000 a year. A year, not for the whole thing, for one year. That means before you even get to housing, food, books, transportation, and all the hidden fees college invent, like their Ticketmaster with ID on the walls, you're already looking at numbers that would have sounded insane a generation ago. And this is not just about private colleges turning themselves into luxury brands with climbing walls and sushi. Public colleges have shot up too. College Board says average public 4-year in-state tuition is now nearly $12,000 a year. That's the part of the history of the story people miss. Even affordable higher education now comes with a price tag that can alter the course of your life. So when Syracuse looks at majors with almost no enrollment and says, maybe we should stop pretending every niche interest needs its own deluxe administrative kingdom. That's not barbarism, that is math. And math, unlike a university brochure, does not lie. If you major in basket weaving, become a hairstylist, make $34,000 a year and have zero debt and you're happy, okay, life goes on. You made a choice, you learned something, no disaster. But if you're making $34,000 a year and you're carrying $50,000, $100,000, sometimes $200,000 in debt, That's not an education story anymore. That is a debt servicing story. That's a, why am I 39 years old and still eating dinner over the sink in a rented apartment, a studio apartment story. That's a, my degree taught me obscure philosophy, but my loan statement taught me despair story. I'm actually sympathetic to the humanities. I really am because the world absolutely needs people who think critically, spot bad arguments, understand history and call out nonsense. But colleges created this problem themselves by becoming luxury price institutions. Once you charge this much, you cannot keep telling families, don't worry about practicality, you always get everything back when you invest in education. Practicality shows up the minute the loan bill arrives. At these prices, every major gets dragged into the same ugly question. Can this degree help someone build a financially stable life if they do not already come from money? If the answer is no, universities can't just keep smiling and handing out brochures like none of this matters. And that's the tragedy, the tragedy, because in an ideal world, we would all want a civilization full of people studying philosophy, literature, history, art, language, and yes, even more obscure things. Civilization needs depth. It needs beauty. It needs memory. It needs people who know something other than coding, finance, and sports management. But once higher education priced itself like a luxury good, it forced a brutal question onto every family in America: can my kid afford to love this subject? That's a very different question from is this subject worthwhile? Philosophy is worthwhile. Classics, worthwhile. Italian is worthwhile. Art is worthwhile. But worthwhile and financeable are no longer the same thing. And that's not just Syracuse's problem, that is America's problem because we've built a higher ed system where the richest kids can afford to study whatever they want and everybody else is quietly told to major in something practical. Or prepare for a lifetime of financial punishment. That is not a free intellectual society. That's a caste system with student orientation. So yes, Syracuse is right to clean house with 55 dead programs that have zero majors. Yes, universities should stop pretending every obscure department is sacred forever. Let's not kid ourselves about what really happened here. This isn't just a curriculum story. It's a cost story. When college becomes this expensive, curiosity becomes a luxury item. And that is the real shame. The podcaster, Scott Galloway, has been very eloquent on this subject that the problem with universities these days is they think of themselves as an LVMH handbag. They're Hermès. They are the $35,000— by the way, I'm not holding up a $35,000 watch. This is an inexpensive Apple Watch I'm holding up. I well remember this trend way back a million years ago when I was in college. And fortunately, I graduated with just less than $10,000 of debt with a philosophy degree from Duke University, and it wasn't particularly onerous. Took me a while, I did pay it back. But these days you see people graduating with so much more debt, sometimes six-figure debt, and it really puts you in a hole for a long time. So I just still remember my freshman year of college would've been 1981 when the Duke Business School all of a sudden dramatically increased their prices. I think it was something like doubling their prices. The student newspaper, The Chronicle, interviewed the dean and said, well, why did your price go up? Why did the tuition jump so much? Did costs go way up? And he goes very blunt and said, oh no, we just wanted to be as expensive as the most prestigious schools, business schools are that we want to be compared to. And this was more than 40 years ago. And this system has repeated itself again and again and again. Everyone wants to be the Rolex watch or the Patek Philippe watch. Everyone wants to be the Lamborghini of education. And it has created a financial arms race that continues to this day, and it's a huge problem. Ultimize.
