
'Academic freedom is under assault': Indiana educators fear degree cuts will redefine higher ed
Six public universities will cut or consolidate about 400 degree programs, or nearly 20% of the state's offerings, the Commission for Higher Education announced June 30.
That's in response to a new state law approved earlier this year to eliminate degrees with low numbers of graduating students. Over three years, undergraduate programs must average 15 graduates, seven for a master's degree program and three for a doctorate program, in order to automatically continue being offered without needing approval from the state.
More cuts could still be coming.
University faculty and staff across the state told IndyStar they believe these cuts will deter students and drive away faculty—further contributing to the brain drain state leaders are trying to curtail.
And they said the lack of appreciation for specialty fields and humanities will hurt student outcomes by shrinking their worldview and reducing soft skill and critical thinking development.
"We're not just talking about what professors can or can't teach," Ball State professor Timothy Berg said. "This is about the freedom of students to study the important subjects that contribute to a good economy and a good society."
State leaders have said the legislation will "streamline" degree program offerings to be in line with the state's economic goals and responsive to student demand. Gov. Mike Braun said in a press release that the move prepares students for "career opportunities in the most in-demand fields."
The Governor's Office did not respond to an IndyStar request for comment regarding academic freedom concerns.
Some professors and staff told IndyStar that they believe this legislation is an example of the government overstepping its role to dictate curricula, but not everyone said it is an explicit violation of their academic freedom.
However, they all said the larger movement to constrict higher education is.
"Academic freedom is under assault broadly," said Carl Pearson, a staff member at Indiana University-Bloomington. "That isn't just in Indiana. That's a national problem."
Academic freedom is defined as the ability for an academic institution's faculty and staff members to build curriculum, research and pursue knowledge without interference from government officials and administrators, according to several First Amendment organizations. Several U.S. Supreme Court cases have labeled academic freedom as protected under the First Amendment.
Indiana's Republican supermajority has passed a number of bills reshaping how Indiana's universities function. Many new laws, including the required degree cuts, are part of a wave of trendy, conservative polices sweeping red states.
In the past two years, the Indiana Legislature has codified a contentious bill mandating "intellectual diversity" on campus, a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, new tenure productivity standards and a change that makes faculty governance groups solely advisory.
Indiana University, too, has seen specific legislation that removed the ability for three trustees to be alumni-elected and barred state funding from touching the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.
Academic freedom advocates said this recent law, which was a last minute addition to the budget taken without public testimony, is another step to devalue higher education.
"When lawmakers tie a university's ability to offer programs to minimum enrollment numbers, they're not just making budget decisions. They're narrowing the scope of inquiry," said Amy Reid, a senior manager of PEN America's Freedom to Learn program. "It may not look like censorship, but it chills academic freedom just the same."
Though the legislation is strictly focused on graduation numbers, the liberal arts will see the most cuts and consolidations, especially in language and cultural studies programs. Regional campuses were also significantly affected since the quotas apply to all public universities, regardless of the size of the student body.
"Our institutions want to ensure the programs they're offering are responsive to student demand and fit the needs of Indiana's evolving economy," Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery said in a news release. "The primary beneficiaries of this work will be students, who face an overwhelming number of degree programs as they make their educational and career decisions.'
This is part of shift away from shared governance between universities and their faculty, which has traditionally decided what students learn in the classroom.
Professors called the idea of prioritizing industrially in-demand degrees over others "shortsighted." Shifting students toward certain degrees for economic development purposes is a misunderstanding of the role of higher education and the economy at large, faculty and staff said.
Faculty and staff also emphasized that students, particularly those in graduate programs, potentially won't attend Hoosier universities at all because they'd rather attend their specific program elsewhere.
"We're basically removing those things as things that your students can study," Berg said. "We're really hamstringing ourselves with future opportunities for this shortsighted goal of saving money or reducing programs for efficiency."
While faculty and staff said economic development is an important piece, they disagreed that higher education's sole purpose is to funnel students into careers. Pearson said higher education is meant to create all-around educated citizens who think critically about issues facing their communities.
"That's a fundamentally different idea of what a university is," Pearson said. "(State leaders) want to create laborers. They want to create a workforce."
A PEN America column published earlier this year argued that laws in Iowa and Florida prioritizing college degree programs' return on investment is a form of censorship to target specific programs and limit the free exchange of ideas.
"We are already seeing a lot of pressure to eliminate programs that don't have this immediate visible cost benefit sort of return," Berg said. "It's going to push this idea that education is simply about job skills rather than helping students grow up and grow out so that they can be real contributors to a good society that we all want."
Purdue Fort Wayne professor Noor O'Neill teaches anthropology and women's studies, which are two programs slated for consolidation. She said limiting educational opportunities to what's best for economic development won't achieve the outcomes leaders desire and students will be left without needed critical thinking skills.
"It's definitely an attack on academic freedom in the sense that they're not allowing us to teach what the faculty believe needs to be taught," O'Neill said. "They're really putting pressure on narrowing the curriculum."
It's largely unclear what the future of many of these programs will look like. Many departments are expected to be folded under a more general umbrella degree, while others may become concentrations rather than a standalone program. Some could be outright eliminated.
Following the bill's passage, faculty and staff said they have not been given much direction from their university's administration, and any communication about department cuts and realignment has come from department chairs and other school-specific leaders.
The uncertainty and larger wave of legislation focused on higher education, academics said, will likely cause their colleagues to leave voluntarily.
Berg said he's seen faculty leave already due to the lack of transparency and the feeling of being abandoned. He and others said they felt their administrations could have done more to demonstrate the need for their fields and fought to keep them alive.
"I've never felt more abandoned and alone in that what I do doesn't matter," Berg said.
Others, like Pearson, are waiting to learn what will happen to their departments and whether there will be layoffs. O'Neill worries this law will be used as an excuse to layoff faculty and staff who have certain political leanings or say things the university doesn't like. She said all faculty are already censoring themselves in the classroom in response to the new laws.
Another staff member at Indiana University told IndyStar that the stress and uncertainty within higher education will likely cause an exodus of students and academics, including himself, out of the state over the next five years.
"I don't see higher ed as being the kind of place for academic freedom, academic inquiry that it used to be," he said. "In states like Indiana, it's going to be about technical training—making sure that your teaching, your research aligns with what politicians in Indianapolis think it should be about."
The USA TODAY Network - Indiana's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Politico
5 minutes ago
- Politico
Game of chicken: Eric Adams, Cuomo want each other out of NYC mayoral race
'I think he really should do an analysis and say: Give Eric an opportunity to run against [Zohran],' Adams said during an interview on CNBC's Squawk Box. The mayor also revealed Cuomo had called him to ask the same thing. 'I'm the sitting mayor of the City of New York, and you expect for me to step aside when you just lost to Zohran by 12 points?' Adams asked in the CNBC interview, citing the nearly $30 million in outside spending on behalf of Cuomo by super PACs and the candidate's own warchest. 'They heard your message. You lost … that's the highest level of arrogance,' he added, accusing Cuomo of having a long history of undermining Black candidates, including former Gov. David Paterson, former state Comptroller H. Carl McCall and Charlie King. (Paterson and McCall endorsed Cuomo's mayoral run earlier this year and King has been a key player in Cuomo's campaign.) The inclusion of Cuomo and Adams on independent lines on the November ballot is making the general election more competitive than any in recent memory. Attorney Jim Walden is also running on an independent line, while Curtis Sliwa is running under the Republican banner. Last week, Walden proposed an independent survey to determine which of the four candidates would be best suited to stop Mamdani. He argued the weaker candidates should then pledge to support the strongest challenger, even though it is too late for anyone to remove their names from the ballot. On Monday, Cuomo's team acknowledged the tough math facing the pack of moderates and the GOP candidate: On their current trajectories, they are set to carve up the non-Mamdani vote into several inconsequential pieces. Cuomo and Adams in particular stand to split their shared base of Black voters. Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi reiterated his team's belief that Adams does not have a path, but said his candidate is considering Walden's pitch.
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump says 25% tariffs coming for Japan and South Korea as trade war escalates again
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he's imposing a 25% tariffs on goods from Japan and South Korea beginning on August 1 as the Republican continues his pressure campaign on longtime U.S. allies who have not yet entered into new trade agreements with his administration. Trump broke the news on July 7 via Truth Social, which is where he posted letters to the leaders of the two Asian economic powerhouses that warn of retaliatory and identical reciprocal increases "If for any reason you decide to raise your tariffs" on the United States. Other letters from Trump are expected to focus on smaller U.S. trading partners. As many as 100 could go out in total before July 9, when the president's pause on higher tariff rates is due to expire. The administration said the rates would take effect on August 1, if countries did not come to another arrangement with the United States before that time. The new date marks a delay by several weeks for the current deadline for the reciprocal tariffs to take effect. Trump unveiled his tariffs in early April, and then paused them after market turmoil. Last week, the president acknowledged a White House pledge was proving to be complicated that would see 90 different deals cut in 90 days with American's trading partners. The administration ultimately spent much of the time negotiating with large nations and countries with which it has the most substantial trade deficits. The president and his advisers were also focused on pushing through Congress the massive tax and spending bill Trump signed into law on July 4. Trump initially said he would put higher tariffs on a slew of nations on April 2 but paused them until 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 9 for most countries while his administration sought new trade deals. The so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs rocked financial markets. They have since recovered, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq setting new records. Since then Trump has announced trade deals with Vietnam and the United Kingdom and a framework agreement with China. He left in place a baseline tariff of 10% on most other nations and also increased tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and introduced exemptions for some foreign-made car parts and automotives. He also threatend What to know on tariffs: Donald Trump pushes forward on tariffs despite court challenges The president said July 3 that because the process was easier he would soon begin sending out regular batches of tariff letters dictating rates to sell products in the United States, rather than negotiating scores of individual trade deals. 'How many deals can you make?' Trump told reporters. 'You can make more deals, but they're very much more complicated.' He added: 'It's just so many countries." Disputes remained with major trading partners such as Canada, Mexico, India and the European Union heading into this week, although Trump's Treasury secretary said new proposals were flooding in with less than 48 hours until the July deadline. As of early afternoon on July 7, the only letters Trump had published were directed at South Korea and Japan, which he hit with roughly the same reciprocal tariff rates as what had been announced before. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNN's "State of the Union" on July 6 that Trump would send out letters to 100 smaller countries with whom the U.S. doesn't have much trade, notifying them that they would face the tariff rate that Trump set in April and then suspended. "President Trump's going to be sending letters to some of our trading partners saying that if you don't move things along, then on August 1 you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level. So I think we're going to see a lot of deals very quickly," Bessent told CNN. Bessent denied that August 1 was a new deadline for negotiations. "We are saying this is when it's happening. If you want to speed things up, have at it. If you want to go back to the old rate, that's your choice," he told CNN. Kevin Hassett, who heads the White House National Economic Council, in an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation" offered some wiggle room for countries engaged in earnest negotiations. Contributing: Bart Jansen, Joey Garrison This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump says 25% tariffs coming for Japan and South Korea

Politico
10 minutes ago
- Politico
Musk puts Trump beef back on the front-burner
In addition to announcing plans for his own political party, Musk spent the 4th of July long weekend bashing the Republican megabill Trump signed into law on Friday, praising Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) for opposing that bill, and lamenting his work leading the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year. 'What the heck was the point of @DOGE if [Trump]'s just going to increase the debt by $5 trillion??,' he wrote on Sunday on X , the social media website he owns. The world's richest person seemed to have gotten under Trump's skin. The president said in a lengthy Truth Social post on Saturday that Musk had gone 'off the rails' and chastised his former ally's bid to launch a third party. The president further suggested that the source of Musk's frustration with the so-called 'big, beautiful bill' stemmed not from its overall government spending but from something more self-serving – its elimination of tax breaks for electric vehicles like the ones produced by Musk's automaker Tesla. The social media flurry further cemented the demise of what was once a historically powerful political alliance. Musk spent nearly $300 million to help Trump and other Republicans get elected last year. Once elected, Trump allowed Musk to lead DOGE, spearhead the mass firings of federal employees and install loyalists in various positions throughout the administration. One of those Musk allies, Jared Isaacman, was tapped to lead NASA before Trump pulled his nomination because it was 'inappropriate,' citing Musk's SpaceX and its close ties to NASA, the president said on Saturday. Musk's attacks on Trump continue despite the mounting downward pressure on his business. On Monday, Tesla stock fell sharply on the news of his intent to form a third party. Tesla's sales took a significant hit this year as Musk dabbled in politics, but the company's stock trended upward as he stepped away from the Trump administration in May. Musk has also continued to suggest that Trump and his Department of Justice are withholding information about the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose arrest and suicide have been the subject of conspiracy theories popular with the online right. The accusations follow his previous claim that files related to the investigation are being withheld because Trump is referenced in documents connected to the case. The Justice Department released a tranche of documents connected to the case in February, but has yet to release all files connected to the case. Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection to Epstein. For Trump, a determined effort by Musk to launch a third-party could pose problems in next year's midterms. Aside from his pledge to back Massie against Trump's effort to primary him, Musk's third party appears calibrated to eat into a segment of Republican base voters — he indicated in social media posts the party would stand for shrinking the national debt, reducing business regulations, protecting free speech and treating the Second Amendment as 'sacred.'