The University of Montana’s decision to terminate its literature master’s program has some faculty members concerned about the future of other liberal arts programs at Montana’s flagship public university and how academic program cuts are made.  Other cuts over the last decade have given some faculty and students the perception that university leadership is struggling to uphold UM’s liberal arts identity, several staff members told Montana Free Press. But the decision to end the literature master’s has also raised concerns about downstream consequences for other programs.  “Apart from our own sort of personal sense of loss as literature faculty, one thing that stands to be a grievous loss here is the way it’s going to degrade the interdisciplinary focus on language and literary arts on campus and in the department,” said Eric Reimer, the director of literature graduate studies, in an April interview.  Reimer said the literature program is one of the oldest on campus, with the first master’s degree awarded in 1915.  “It’s been central to the branding of the institution for over a century,” he said.  The literature program is intertwined with other parts of the English department, particularly the creative writing master of fine arts program, Reimer said. The loss of the “enrichments” of the literature program, as well as the contributions of its students and faculty, could adversely affect the creative writing MFA program, he said.  Literature Professor Katie Kane said the loss of the literature master’s program will also undercut the interdisciplinary studies graduate program, which often includes graduate seminars taught by English faculty. Those seminars are dependent on literature graduate students, she said.   A UM spokesperson, Dave Kuntz, told MTFP that the cuts are not a reflection on the quality or contributions of the program, but rather about shifts in student demand. Liberal arts programs remain an important part of the university, he said.  “UM is not moving away from humanities and the liberal arts,” Kuntz said. “But for our institution to be successful, academic programs are not going to look exactly like they did 30, 40, and 50 years ago.” University of Montana campus is seen on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Missoula. Credit: Lauren Miller, Montana Free Press, CatchLight Local/Report for America This cut follows the 2024 termination of an English master’s program that prepared students for teaching careers. Reimer said the cumulative effect of both recent cancellations is to conclude that UM’s administrators can envision a campus without an English department.  “You can say I’m overreacting or being too dire, but the administration is giving us no reason to believe otherwise — that they value what we do and that they value the instruction we provide as far as argumentative reasoning and teaching writing on campus,” Reimer said.  Kane said she fears the general de-emphasis of literature will impact the academic reputation of the university. Student research often focuses on stories of Montana and the American West, she said.   “Central to Montana’s cultural heritage are the works of writers such as James Welch and Norman Maclean, long studied and taught within this program,” Kane said. “Ironically, access to Montana stories by Montanans and by Americans is being eroded at the very institution where many of them originated.”  Education Professor Matthew Schertz told MTFP the cuts are part of a larger nationwide trend of moving away from a general liberal arts education in favor of  professionalization. “This is the liberal arts university for the state of Montana,” he said. “It’s a shame to curtail the original mission of the school and essentially abandon the very basis of knowledge for civilization for the pursuit of currently popular programs.”  SHIFTING ENROLLMENT The administration — including the provost, vice provost and dean of the graduate school and dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences — notified the literature program of the proposed cut in December. The university also proposed terminating the economics master’s program and indefinitely pausing the Irish Studies and Chinese minor programs.  Three Faculty Senate committees — the Graduate Council, senate executive committee and Academic Standards and Curriculum Review Committee — discussed the proposal during multiple meetings with the English department and representatives from the Provost’s Office since January, said Kane, a senate member. By March, the curriculum committee and the Graduate Council recommended the Faculty Senate not accept the proposal. The full senate voted April 2 to oppose the cuts of the master’s and minor programs.  On April 15, John DeBoer, the vice provost for academic affairs, notified faculty and students that the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education accepted the university’s recommendation to terminate the master’s in literature. Kuntz said the master’s and minor programs recommended for termination or moratorium were no longer sustainable due to enrollment declines and the cost of supporting them, he said.  “The fact is, there was not a way forward for UM to meet the financial demands related to changing student academic interests without program termination,” Kuntz said in an April email to MTFP.   Any financial savings from the cuts will be reinvested in programs that need additional resources to meet growing student interest and Ph.D. programs, as UM needs a certain number of Ph.D. grads to maintain R1 status, or Research 1: Very High Spending and Doctoral Production, Kuntz said. The R1 designation is the highest classification for research institutions and requires a certain amount of research spending and doctoral degrees.   Kuntz clarified that terminating the program will not result in a net cost savings, as the graduate student stipends will be reallocated to other programs, including the masters in fine arts in creative writing. No jobs will be cut, he said.  The administration made the decision to terminate the literature program in April because it accepted applications from prospective students for the next academic year, Kuntz said. UM had a responsibility to ensure those prospective students were notified of the termination before upcoming national application deadlines, he said.  The literature program will “teach-out” remaining students to ensure they can graduate but will no longer admit new students. There were eight students enrolled in the Literature master’s program last year, down from 12 in 2018, according to numbers provided by Kuntz.  Reimer said enrollment in the program has actually increased this year to about 12, and that that number includes a couple of students who did not complete the program in the typical two-year timeline.  Still, Reimer argued that enrollment is not a good metric of the program’s success, as many of UM’s master’s programs have similar numbers. Another way to vet value, he said, is that the literature program’s graduates are regularly placed into “high-quality and esteemed” Ph.D. programs. Students also have a consistent pattern of attending law school, working in editing and publishing and teaching overseas, Reimer said. One recent graduate works as a software engineer for Disney, he said.  “We’re in touch with our former students far and wide, and they seem to be doing really well,” Reimer said. “When students come out with a humanities degree, they don’t start at the same salary as STEM but [they] catch up. It’s a complicated picture, but it speaks to the strength and value of the program.”  A CONTROVERSIAL DECISION Reimer said the recent program cuts have created an “adversarial relationship” between faculty and administrators. Despite that current dynamic, he said the English department has had a history of partnership with the university’s upper leadership. However, turnover in key administrative positions, including the provost, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and dean of the Graduate School, have caused instability in recent years, he said. Reimer said the decision to cut the literature master’s program lacked clear reasoning and discussion with faculty. Other faculty members expressed similar concerns about the process.  A written statement from the Department of Economics shared during the April 2 Faculty Senate meetings said the proposed termination of its master’s program also lacked transparency and “a clear, evidence-based explanation for why our program was singled out among many possible budgetary options.”  During the meeting, Provost Adrea Lawrence and DeBoer, the vice provost for academic affairs, acknowledged the process lacked definitive evaluation standards and timelines, and that communication was insufficient, according to the meeting minutes. The office committed to establishing clearer evaluation thresholds, improving coordination between review processes and increasing transparency.   The University Faculty Association, the union for university faculty members, had “grave concern” about the administration’s decision-making process, according to Tobin Miller Shearer, the union president. The faculty union represents any faculty, tenure track or not, working half-time or more for more than two semesters. Shearer said the union believes the administration has undermined the relationship with faculty by moving forward with the decision to terminate the programs despite the senate’s opposition, primarily because the administration acted on proposals before the shared governance process was complete. Those actions include laying off faculty in the Irish Studies and Chinese minor programs before that review wrapped up and “zeroing out” the graduate assistant allocations for economics and literature, Shearer said.  “It’s within the purview of the administration to make decisions, but to do so before shared governance has weighed in is a deep breaking of trust with the shared governance process,” he said.  Shearer said in his 18 years at UM and nearly a decade involved with the union, he’s never seen a process ignore the spirit of the principle of shared governance like this.  “This has potential to be precedent setting,” he said.  Kuntz, the university spokesperson, said the collective bargaining contract provides faculty the right to review any academic changes that are made by administration — but not to necessarily block those proposals.  “That review and consultation is critically important to the shared governance leadership model that has served UM well, and the feedback from Faculty Senate and Graduate Council was taken into consideration,” he said. “But ultimately, the responsibility to steward the university’s financial resources rests with administration.” The post How UM’s literature cut could impact its liberal arts identity appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less