Under the guidance of the United States Department of Education, there have been major budget cuts for higher education, but few have been felt as hard as those made to humanities departments. At the University of Minnesota, the vote to cut the budget of academic departments suggests an uncertain future for a number of liberal arts programs.
As of the 2027 fall semester, the Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies department has had to put applications on hold for its PhD in Feminist Studies graduate program. The department explicitly cites budget constraints as the reason for halting admission to the program until the 2028 fall semester.
For a program that only admits three to four students a year, it should be easy to consistently remain open to new applicants who are passionate about the coursework. The program offers a place for students with significant amounts of undergraduate experience in gender or LGBTQ studies.
First-year University student Storm Honigstock said that funding programs like Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies is important because, like any academic sphere, it is critical for furthering the field as a whole.
“I think it’s a topic where it’s important to be looking at it both from the personal life experience perspective, and then all the way up through the broad academic field,” Honigstock said.
Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies can also be linked to many different academic fields such as psychology, sociology, political science and even economics, Honigstock said. A degree in gender studies can be incredibly versatile and can be used in many different aspects of a student’s potential career and personal life.
Although halting applications for one year may seem insignificant, this scenario is a close-to-home example of the consequences of undervaluing humanities degrees across the country.
Gender studies programs have always had to fight to prove their worth, and now it’s become even more difficult for them to establish themselves. The Department of Education describes cuts to gender and women’s studies programs as victories for higher education.
The Department of Education claims these programs are low-value and do not benefit students for their future in the workforce. Since there is an extensive list of possible careers with a Gender and Sexuality Studies degree, an entire field of study being taken away shouldn’t be determined by how profitable it may be in a constantly changing workforce.
Our increasingly cynical outlook on life has made us lose our ability to see higher education outside of its potential financial benefits. A discipline that emphasizes learning about other people’s experiences is seen as useless. Any degree that’s not related to business or science is subject to intense scrutiny about its applicability outside of academia.
Programs at universities across the country, similar to Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, offer a perspective into the lives of women and LGBTQ individuals that serves as crucial learning for many students. Courses in these departments offer students a unique opportunity to learn about lived experiences that they might not have had access to outside of their academic setting, providing a much-needed bridge in the gap of knowledge that students of different backgrounds may have about one another.
Honigstock said Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies courses have the potential to broaden a student’s perspective, and further remarked that it’s easy to avoid your own worldview when you don’t have a way to challenge why you think the way you do.
For graduate students who have devoted their education to these studies, having access to these programs is vital. For the communities affected by issues that are taught in Gender Studies courses, we must keep these programs well-funded.
Honigstock said having departments like Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies can directly affect the communities that are taught about by informing students about issues they face.
“It increases the level of understanding and it increases the effort put in to make sure that people feel welcome, and I think it makes it easier to identify issues,” Honigstock said. “And when people are aware of issues, they start trying to fix them.”
No program at a Big Ten university that prides itself on the value of its education should have to deny applications for graduate degrees due to budget restraints.
When looking at where to invest University funding, we should pay special attention to humanities programs like Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies because they represent some of the most dedicated academics working to help marginalized communities.
These studies are built on a foundation that is over 200 years old, and we need to work to hold them up now more than ever.
