At least 27 graduate programs across Michigan State University are pausing new student admissions for the next academic year amid budget constraints, according to university websites.
Current students say this is detrimental to their studies, while colleges and the university say the pauses help prioritize funding to currently enrolled students.
College and department leaders are tasked by the university with slashing their budgets by 9% over the next two years.
And for some colleges, that savings process includes reviewing programs, according to university spokesperson Amber McCann.
“There are colleges that have made the decision to pause graduate admissions for the year to assess demand and interest,” McCann said in a statement, “while other colleges may have ended new enrollment because of lack of demand.”
The College of Arts and Letters is taking the biggest hit, pausing 22 out of 24 graduate programs. A new class of students will not be starting until Fall of 2027.
In an Oct. 24 press release, the college said the move is “a strategic step to align academic and financial planning with university-wide goals.”
McCann, the spokesperson, said five programs are paused in the College of Education as well.
The university has not posted a list of programs paused for next year.
Paige Baisley is the vice president for external affairs at the Council of Graduate Students at MSU. She’s also a fourth-year doctoral student.
She said moratoriums – or pauses – protect current students and incoming students from being accepted into a program without the resources to support them. But that comes at a cost.
“A lot of the graduate student experience is built on collaboration and traditions from year to year,” Baisley said. “Losing an entire cohort can really hinder current students' opportunities for collaboration. When those moratoriums are listed, you're going to have students where there's a gap, and perhaps those traditions and mentorship are not as readily available or apparent.”
Baisley added that program continuity from year to year keeps programs strong by bringing in new students and ideas.
Because of program pauses and budget issues, some departments are axing class offerings. They are trimming graduate-level courses not taken as often by their own majors.
That means students outside of the departments with moratoriums are also affected.
Baisley said a set of statistics classes taken by many non-majors were dropped because the professor was laid off due to budget cuts. She said students across departments came together to advocate that the classes were helpful or that they expected to take them.
Students and a few departments are working together to preserve the course materials online so “when the courses can start up again, that's not completely lost,” Baisley said.
Cancelling classes hurts graduate students in other ways, too.
Current students worry budget cuts could impact their job opportunities at school, especially when it comes to teaching undergraduate classes.
Jared Maul is the president of the Graduate Employee Union. He said fewer students means fewer classes for graduate students to teach.
When a graduate-level course is cancelled because of low enrollment, the original professor needs a new class to teach. That new class might have been an undergraduate course taught by a graduate student, Maul said.
“I see the cuts inadvertently affecting graduate students because we're not right now the main concern. Because we occupy a space between being employees, because we get paid to teach classes, as well as students,” Maul said.
He said the university should be investing in graduate students because they’re the next leaders in their fields. Students need financial resources to study, and part of that comes from working for the university.
Fewer new students also mean there are fewer people doing research in labs on campus. That could lead to current graduate students being overworked.
“The amount of work is not going to change,” Maul said. “And that's also concerning because if you're a research assistant, and you're supposed to work for 20 hours in your lab, you should be able to do that.”
Research could take longer to complete, or students could feel pressured to work more hours. Maul said that means students could take longer to complete their degrees.
“However, there's also a push to move people through the system faster,” Maul said. “And that creates a situation where you're working more for less.”
University-level cuts paired with federal cuts to research have created an uncertain environment for graduate students. Maul said graduate students are “the bottom of the pyramid” and “get cut first.”
“I’ve contacted the HR department to see if the president has kind of some information or guidance for TAs and graduate students, but they haven't gotten back to me yet,” Maul said. “I want to keep following that up because, even if it's bad news, it's still helpful because people have to plan their lives.”
