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ANALYSIS: Women’s studies departments are closing or downsizing across U.S.
A week before the start of the fall semester on Monday, a series of Instagram posts begged University of Maryland students to sign up for a “popular” and “fun” class where students “make monsters and learn stuff about Indigenous Feminisms.”
Only six students were signed up for the 21-seat class “Indigenous Feminisms 101” with Professor Shelbi Meissner as of Monday afternoon, the first day of classes at the public university, according to the Office of the Registrar website.
This is despite the Instagram account for the UMD Indigenous Futures Lab, which Meissner runs, promoting the class several times in mid-August.
One post read: “sign up for Shelbi’s class please it’s really fun we make monsters and learn stuff about Indigenous Feminisms.” Another questioned the time slot, and a third wondered why there were “still so many seats available in one of our most popular classes!!!”
But the low enrollment does not appear to be limited to that class – or the university.
Rather, the situation appears to be emblematic of a larger matter: the decline of women’s studies departments. The trend has been noted from public universities to the Ivy League, and conservatives point to politics and the job market as reasons.
“If women’s studies departments were actually creating and teaching scientific information on the differences between the sexes, they might be useful,” Inez Stepman with Independent Women’s Forum told The College Fix.
Instead, these departments, like much of academia, have elevated progressive activism above “the scientific pursuit of knowledge on questions of sex,” the senior legal and policy analyst said in an email Monday.
“… and they do so largely at taxpayer expense,” Stepman said, noting that 93 percent of student loans come through the federal government.
“If women’s studies departments imagine they are ‘miss independent,’ they are deluding themselves. In reality, they are dependent on the taxpayers, who are rightly questioning whether such degrees are worth the heavy subsidies they receive,” she said.
At the University of Maryland, there are several fall classes in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies where only a few students have signed up, most with progressive themes in their descriptions.
The class enrollment numbers came from the UMD Office of the Registrar website, which lists the seats available in each class and updates daily.
As of Monday, the website showed a handful of classes in the department that are full or nearly full and a few with waiting lists. Notably, all of the full classes are ones that fulfill “general education” requirements and are cross-listed with other departments
However, upper level classes specifically for department majors appear to be struggling to fill.
Along with Meissner’s “Indigenous Feminisms” course, another example is “Caribbean Women” with 11 of the 35 seats full. The course analyzes “the lives and experiences of women across the Caribbean region, through an examination of their roles in individual, national, social and cultural formations.”
The classes “Health Inequality” and “Transnational Feminism” are only about half full, and “Theoretical Foundations in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies” has five seats full out of 12.
Meanwhile, the class “Ungendering Blackness” is only a third full with five of 18 seats taken. The course explores topics including “genderwhere subjects refuse” and “gender in the context of ananti-Black and homomisic world.”
Neither Meissner nor department Chair Neda Atanasoski responded to The College Fix when contacted to ask about enrollment trends in the department and the value of women and gender studies. The Fix also asked Meissner if she runs the Indigenous Futures Lab Instagram account. An automated email response from Atanasoski stated she is on leave for the year.
The university media relations office also did not respond to two emails asking about enrollment trends in the department and the threshold for canceling a class due to low enrollment.
Statistics published by the university offer more evidence of low enrollment in the department.
Reports between 2020 and 2025 show a drop in enrollment in the College of Arts and Humanities, which houses the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The reports do not break down the numbers by department.
The college had 2,807 majors in 2020 and 2,382 in 2025, a decline of more than 400 students.
Notably, the university’s total undergraduate enrollment grew across the same five-year period.
Additionally, the University of Maryland awarded only 13 bachelor’s degrees in the “ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies” category in the 2023-2024 academic year, according to the most recent available data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
The University of Maryland is just on example. In April, Harvard’s student newspaper also noted a sharp enrollment decline in its Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program.
What’s more, East Carolina University, New College of Florida, Texas A&M University, Towson University, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Iowa, University of Toledo, and Wichita State University all have cut women’s studies departments recently, according to an April news release by the U.S. Department of Education.
The Trump administration celebrated the trend as a “victory,” stating that these “underused programs” are being cut and the money reinvested in degrees focused on high-demand jobs.
“Universities are closing their women’s and gender studies programs due to increasing employer concerns about the lack of workforce-benefiting skills,” the release stated.
MORE: After 50 years, several women’s studies programs on chopping block
