Specialist master’s ‘main victims’ of course-cutting spree

Social sciences and business courses have borne the brunt of master’s closures in the past year, with academics who taught on disappearing programmes warning that niche, more specialist study is “losing legitimacy” in the eyes of university leaders.

An increasing focus on employability and courses that pay their own way are to blame for the wave of hundreds of shuttered programmes not recruiting for September entry this year, critics warned.

An analysis of Times Higher Education’s Courses 360 data collected between September 2025 and April this year revealed that 321 postgraduate programmes within the field of social sciences were closed for the 2026-27 cycle.

Other hard-hit subject areas included education, which suffered 148 programmes cut; subjects related to design, and creative and performing arts – 151 cuts; business and management – 450 cuts; languages and courses relating to the study of specific areas and regions – 131 cuts.

Meanwhile, 96 courses relating to historical, philosophical and religious studies closed.

Postgraduate programmes in the sciences were also at risk: computing suffered 129 closures and engineering and technology was hit by 115. The data reflect the picture at which the information was collected, and it is possible that further courses may have since closed.

The figures come after widespread concern about the closure of Birmingham City University’s master’s course in black studies, a year into its existence, announced last month.

A Birmingham City spokesperson said the decision to shut the course and another in global justice was due to “low demand”, and the university was continuing to explore “opportunities for alternative provision” in each case.

Kehinde Andrews, professor of black studies at Birmingham City, said the loss of the course reflected a system that has become ever more “market driven”.

“In this system, subjects like black studies are assumed to be niche add-ons that aren’t necessary for the job market,” Andrews told THE. “Criminology gets resources because TV police shows make the subject popular,” he continued, “whilst critical subjects like black studies are neglected because universities can’t see the market.”

Catherine Rottenberg, a professor in the School of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, told THE that “it is true” that specialist programmes “are not, for the most part, moneymakers”, with fewer students “flocking” to study them.

But Rottenberg, whose university has ceased to offer an individual master’s in black British literature despite backlash from students and staff, said “the sad reality is that universities are becoming less and less interested in anything critical or anything that challenges the status quo”.

“Vice-chancellors now see themselves as CEOs rather than as leaders in the quest for knowledge, and students now see themselves as consumers,” said Rottenberg. “This process goes hand in hand with universities’ preoccupation with employability.”

She continued: “We are losing the notion that knowledge…is worth pursuing for its own sake, and that is why these niche programmes are not only losing students but also legitimacy [in the eyes of university leaders].”

A representative for Goldsmiths said the black British literature programme was to continue in an alternative form “by consolidating it into a new master’s in critical and creative studies in literature”.

Joseph Skinner, who used to teach on the MA in Classics and ancient history at Newcastle University, paused since 2023, noted that “small programmes are expensive to run in terms of both staff time and money”, calling the “wider trend of cutbacks” evidence of the “degree to which the higher education sector has been commercialised”.

Laura Ugolini, a professor of history at the University of Wolverhampton, previously contributed to her institution’s master’s in popular culture, which was cut alongside a number of others before the 2023-24 academic year began.

Ugolini said she did not believe that universities were “intentionally using the crisis to cut particular courses”, but that nevertheless “valuable and cutting-edge courses” were “victims of the current pressures on higher education”.

“Where I think we might do more is in being a bit more creative in response: rather than simply closing courses down, we should explore the possibility of offering shorter courses, or courses that don’t require assignments and don’t lead to a particular qualification, or day schools, all of which might just be more affordable,” Ugolini said.

“The interest – whether it is in black studies or in popular culture or other topics – hasn’t somehow disappeared.”

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com