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Boston University suspends a dozen PhD programs after historic 7-month strike
Doctoral applicants in areas like English and history will have to wait a year or more to apply to Boston University.
After a seven-month graduate worker strike, Boston University suspended applications to a dozen doctoral programs for the coming academic year.
The university’s American and New England studies, anthropology, classical studies, English, history, history of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religion, romance studies, and sociology programs will not be accepting new doctoral students next year, BU said. All of the programs are in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
The programs enroll an average of nine students in an entering cohort, according to data from the fall of 2022.
The decision to suspend came after “careful consideration,” and BU intends to reopen admissions for future years, the application website read. Other programs still open to new applicants, like chemistry and creative writing, have deadlines in mid-December or early January.
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The suspension of the programs, first reported by the online publication Inside Higher Ed, comes after the Boston University Graduate Workers Union’s 206-day strike, which ended in October. The BUGWU is represented by SEIU Local 509.
During the strike, the union was fighting for a yearly stipend of more than $62,000 for salaried doctoral workers, who were making between $27,000 and $40,000 stipend. The final contract included a $45,000 stipend with a 3 percent increase over the contract’s three years.
The deans of the College of Arts and Sciences, which houses the affected programs, said the new contract has “budgetary implications” in an email to professors, The Boston Globe reported. The email said BU needs to balance its “existing commitments to the doctoral students already enrolled in our programs and admissions for next year.”
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Professors were told in September that their programs would be rolled back, in part due to the“significant additional cost for increased stipend and benefits support needed per PhD,” the Globe reported.
BU did not return a request for comment, but spokesperson Colin Riley pointed WBUR to a university task force looking into the future of doctoral education at BU, which completed its findings last year. The report found that fewer graduates were securing tenured faculty positions. It also identified a financial impact from increasing grad student unionization efforts nationwide, WBUR reported.
The job market is shrinking for doctoral program graduates in general, the Globe found previously. BU’s graduate students number more than 18,000, which is more than their undergraduate population.
SEIU Local 509 said BU hasn’t explained the “drastic decision” and said the new contract increasing labor costs didn’t contribute to the decision.
“The suspension of admissions to programs such as Philosophy, History, and English—fields where graduate workers play an essential role in teaching and research at the university—raises serious questions about BU’s long-term commitment to these academic disciplines,” their statement said. “It is concerning that the university appears willing to reduce opportunities for students in these fields and that there have been suggestions that this decision is tied to the contractual gains of graduate workers.”
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