Marymount University in VA nixes ten undergrad and graduate majors due to low interest

Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, revealed this week in a letter that it has voted to do away with ten undergraduate majors and one graduate degree program due to low interest from students.

The majors that are set to be eliminated include: B.A. Art, B.A. Economics, B.A. English, B.A. History, B.S. Mathematics, B.A. Philosophy, B.A. Secondary Education, B.A. Sociology, B.A. Theology & Religious Studies, and M.A. English & Humanities. The letter, obtained by Fox5 DC, explained why the Catholic university’s Board of Trustees voted to remove the majors from their course offerings.

The letter claims the majors are “rarely selected” by Marymount students, and “have only graduated a handful of students in the past decade.” The subjects will still be included in the school’s core curriculum, but will no longer be offered as majors. The move was approved after the Board examined “data and research … supported by insight and recommendations from faculty-led committees including the Faculty Advisory Council and the Academic Policy, Budget and Planning Committee.”

According to a report by the Washington Post in September 2022, the majors that are shrinking in enrollment the fastest in the US include those in the social sciences and vocational subjects. Schools around the country have made similar moves to Marymount, with a “disproportionate” number of the dropped majors being in the humanities and sciences.

Marymount told Fox5 it plans to funnel the money that was going into the canceled majors to areas of study that are more popular with students in 2023.