Students want ROI and jobs
About half as many students in the Universities of Wisconsin system are getting bachelor’s degrees in ethnic and gender studies as did at their peak in 2013.
Bachelor’s degrees focusing on gender and ethnic groups have been on a steady decline, from 157 in the 2012-13 school year to 67 in 2023-24, according to Universities of Wisconsin data reviewed by the Badger Institute. In the most recent school year, 2024-25, the total number rebounded slightly to 82.
At the same time, interest in those classes remains high. Students obtaining certificates in what the system terms “area, ethnic, cultural, gender and group studies” have increased by more than 127 percent, from 346 in 2018-19 to 784 in 2024-25, according to the data.
Certificates are earned through focused study of 12 to 24 credits that can be applied to a major or can stand alone.
Approximately half of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in the “area, ethnic, cultural, gender and group studies’ area in 2024-25 were in women’s studies. Much smaller numbers were awarded in areas such as Japanese studies and Latin American studies. Only four bachelor’s degrees in 2024-25 were awarded in African-American/Black studies.
The general decrease in enrollment in those disciplines over the last dozen years and a concurrent drop in funding has caused schools in Wisconsin and across the country to consolidate and jettison programs.
The economic disruption of the pandemic, tuition rates that have more than doubled over the past 25 years, and the explosion of technology, making engineering and computer sciences more valuable, have forced many students to reevaluate their educations.
“People are so much more in tune with and worried about (return on investment) than they were in previous years, because coming to college today costs more than it cost previously,” Taylor Odle, professor of educational studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told a student newspaper, The Badger Herald.
Critics, including the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers, point to President Trump’s executive order in his first term to root out racial preferences branded as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI, from the federal government as the first political thrust against race and gender studies on campus. But the data shows that the drift away from those studies as majors predated Trump’s announcement that he was running for president in 2015.
The first women’s studies program in the UW system was created in 1975. In 1989, the system added a requirement that all students take an ethnic studies class.
Across the UW system, students earned 79 bachelor’s degrees in ethnic, gender and related studies in 2002-03, according to the data. Five years later, there were 136 graduates. The numbers flattened during the Great Recession, peaked at 157 in 2013, then fell, with 105 in 2020, and plummeting with the onset of COVID.
Over the past decade, there has been a steady increase in students earning certificates in ethnic, gender and related studies, although that increase is reflected across all disciplines on all campuses, according to the data.
In 2017-18, students earned a total of 3,927 certificates. This year, that number was 7,723, a 97 percent increase in less than a decade, according to the data.
The reaction from teachers and administrators to ethnic and gender studies degree trends has been to circle the wagons. After UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced in July the school was closing its DEI office, word began circulating that the schools intended to end the long-standing ethnic studies requirement.
Without the requirement, a student member of the school’s Ethnic Studies Committee told reporters, fewer students would take those classes.
UW Interim Provost John Zumbrunnen last month scrambled to clarify what he said was a misunderstanding about a streamlining of course requirements into six uniform categories across the UW system, as required by Act 15, the state’s 2025-27 budget bill.
All students are still required to complete an ethnic studies class, he said, but gender studies has no requirement.
Despite modest upticks in ethnic and gender studies degrees this year, systemwide and in Madison, the outlook on Wisconsin and national campuses is one of retrenchment.
The University of California at Santa Cruz closed its feminist studies department in July after 50 years. Faculty had decreased from 12 to 2.5 over the past eight years.
Texas Christian University announced that its women and gender studies and comparative race and ethnic studies departments would be dissolved at the end of the 2026 school year.
The University of Iowa consolidated its gender, social justice and African American studies classes into a single department. Texas A&M dropped an LGBTQ+ Studies minor, part of a larger purge.
The State of Florida, following in the footsteps of North Carolina, launched a pilot program to study the return on investment for degrees earned in computer science, civil engineering, finance and women’s or gender studies.
This didn’t come overnight. Even an advocacy group, the National Women’s Studies Association, in its 2023 study of 244 programs, found nearly as many departments losing majors as gaining them.
About four in 10 departments reported their budgets had decreased, one in four had lost staff, and one in five lost full-time faculty. Many departments, the study said, were being run with no full-time faculty.
The Badger Institute contacted the heads of gender and ethnic studies departments at the six largest Wisconsin state universities to ask for specifics. Only the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse responded, and then only to say that their bachelor’s numbers did not follow statewide patterns and that the school does not offer a standalone certificate.
The bachelor’s and certificate trends statewide indicate that some undergraduates want to take some classes in gender and ethnic-related studies but that the vast majority do not believe you can build a career or a life around them.
Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.
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