With affirmative action programs banned and diversity, equity and inclusion programs increasingly targeted, U.S. colleges and universities are looking at other ways to support minority students and staff.

Paul Baskin writes in Times Higher Education about the move to eliminate DEI, and how colleges are coping. (August 2024)

A former Cornell University student arrested for posting statements threatening violence against Jewish people on campus last fall after the start of the war in Gaza was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison.

Patrick Dai, of suburban Rochester, New York, was accused by federal officials in October of posting anonymous threats to shoot and stab Jewish people on a Greek life forum. The threats came during a spike in antisemitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric related to the war and rattled Jewish students on the upstate New York campus.

Dai pleaded guilty in April of posting threats to kill or injure another person using interstate communications.

He was sentenced in federal court to 21 months in prison and three years of supervised release by Judge Brenda Sannes, according to federal prosecutors. The judge said Dai “substantially disrupted campus activity” and committed a hate crime, but noted his diagnosis of autism, his mental health struggles and his nonviolent history, according to cnycentral.com.

Dai, 22, had faced a possible maximum sentence of five years in prison.

“Every student has the right to pursue their education without fear of violence based on who they are, how they look, where they are from or how they worship,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a news release. “Antisemitic threats of violence, like the defendant’s vicious and graphic threats here, violate that right."

Dai’s mother has said she believes the threats were partly triggered by medication he was taking to treat depression and anxiety.

Public defender Lisa Peebles has argued that Dai is pro-Israel and that the posts were a misguided attempt to garner support for the country.

“He believed, wrongly, that the posts would prompt a ‘blowback’ against what he perceived as anti-Israel media coverage and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus,” Peebles wrote in a court filing.

Dai, a junior then, was suspended from the Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York.

Christina Westman dreamed of working with Parkinson's disease and stroke patients as a music therapist when she started studying at St. Cloud State University.

But her schooling was upended in May when administrators at the Minnesota college announced a plan to eliminate its music department as it slashes 42 degree programs and 50 minors.

It's part of a wave of program cuts in recent months, as U.S. colleges large and small try to make ends meet. Among their budget challenges: Federal COVID relief money is now gone, operational costs are rising and fewer high school graduates are going straight to college.

The cuts mean more than just savings, or even job losses. Often, they create turmoil for students who chose a campus because of certain degree programs and then wrote checks or signed up for student loans.

"For me, it's really been anxiety-ridden," said Westman, 23, as she began the effort that ultimately led her to transfer to Augsburg University in Minneapolis. "It's just the fear of the unknown."

At St. Cloud State, most students will be able to finish their degrees before cuts kick in, but Westman's music therapy major was a new one that hadn't officially started. She has spent the past three months in a mad dash to find work in a new city and sublet her apartment in St. Cloud after she had already signed a lease. She was moving into her new apartment Friday.

For years, many colleges held off making cuts, said Larry Lee, who was acting president of St. Cloud State but left last month to lead Blackburn College in Illinois.

College enrollment declined during the pandemic, but officials hoped the figures would recover to pre-COVID levels and had used federal relief money to prop up their budgets in the meantime, he said.

"They were holding on, holding on," Lee said, noting colleges must now face their new reality.

Higher education made up some ground last fall and in the spring semester, largely as community college enrollment began to rebound, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data showed.

But the trend for four-year colleges remains worrisome. Even without growing concerns about the cost of college and the long-term burden of student debt, the pool of young adults is shrinking.

Birth rates fell during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 and never recovered. Now those smaller classes are preparing to graduate and head off to college.

"It's very difficult math to overcome," said Patrick Lane, vice president at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, a leading authority on student demographics.

Complicating the situation: the federal government's chaotic overhaul of its financial aid application. Millions of students entered summer break still wondering where they were going to college this fall and how they would pay for it. With jobs still plentiful, although not as much as last year, some experts fear students won't bother to enroll at all.

"This year going into next fall, it's going to be bad," said Katharine Meyer, a fellow in the Governance Studies program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonprofit Brookings Institution. "I think a lot of colleges are really concerned they're not going to make their enrollment targets."

Many colleges like St. Cloud State already had started plowing through their budget reserves. The university's enrollment rose to around 18,300 students in fall 2020 before steadily falling to about 10,000 students in fall 2023.

St. Cloud State's student population has now stabilized, Lee said, but spending was far too high for the reduced number of students. The college's budget shortfall totaled $32 million over the past two years, forcing the sweeping cuts.

Some colleges have taken more extreme steps, closing their doors. That happened at the 1,000-student Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama, the 900-student Fontbonne University in Missouri, the 350-student Wells College in New York and the 220-student Goddard College in Vermont.

Cuts, however, appear to be more commonplace. Two of North Carolina's public universities got the green light last month to eliminate more than a dozen degree programs ranging from ancient Mediterranean studies to physics.

Arkansas State University announced last fall it was phasing out nine programs. Three of the 64 colleges in the State University of New York system have cut programs amid low enrollment and budget woes.

Other schools slashing and phasing out programs include West Virginia University, Drake University in Iowa, the University of Nebraska campus in Kearney, North Dakota State University and, on the other side of the state, Dickinson State University.

Experts say it's just the beginning. Even schools that aren't immediately making cuts are reviewing their degree offerings. At Pennsylvania State University, officials are looking for duplicative and under-enrolled academic programs as the number of students shrinks at its branch campuses.

Particularly affected are students in smaller programs and those in the humanities, which now graduate a smaller share of students than 15 years ago.

"It's a humanitarian disaster for all of the faculty and staff involved, not to mention the students who want to pursue this stuff," said Bryan Alexander, a Georgetown University senior scholar who has written on higher education. "It's an open question to what extent colleges and universities can cut their way to sustainability."

For Terry Vermillion, who just retired after 34 years as a music professor at St. Cloud State, the cuts are hard to watch. The nation's music programs took a hit during the pandemic, he said, with Zoom band nothing short of "disastrous" for many public school programs.

"We were just unable to really effectively teach music online, so there's a gap," he said. "And, you know, we're just starting to come out of that gap and we're just starting to rebound a little bit. And then the cuts are coming."

For St. Cloud State music majors such as Lilly Rhodes, the biggest fear is what will happen as the program is phased out. New students won't be admitted to the department and her professors will look for new jobs.

"When you suspend the whole music department, it's awfully difficult to keep ensembles alive," she said. "There's no musicians coming in, so when our seniors graduate, they go on, and our ensembles just keep getting smaller and smaller.

"It's a little difficult to keep going if it's like this," she said.