The University of Chicago has expanded its planned pause on Ph.D. admissions in the Arts and Humanities Division for the 2026–27 academic year, following recommendations from faculty leaders. Most departments in the division will not accept new Ph.D. students during this period, marking a significant shift from earlier plans.

Initially, the division intended to pause admissions in only half of its departments while reducing numbers in the rest. However, after consultations with faculty, the decision was revised to implement a broader pause across nearly all departments in the division, with only two exceptions.

Expanded pause applies to most humanities programmes

According to Inside Higher Ed, Arts and Humanities Dean Deborah Nelson announced that all departments in the division would pause admissions except philosophy and one programme within the music department. The affected departments include art history, cinema and media studies, classics, comparative literature, East Asian languages and civilizations, English language and literature, Germanic studies, linguistics, Middle Eastern studies, Romance languages and literatures, Slavic languages and literatures, South Asian languages and civilizations, and the music department’s ethnomusicology and history and theory of music programmes.The Social Sciences Division also announced it will not accept new Ph.D. students in four programmes in 2026–27: anthropology, political economy, social thought, and conceptual and historical studies of science. The Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice previously stated it would pause Ph.D. admissions, as did the Harris School of Public Policy for the Harris Ph.D. in public policy studies, the political economy Ph.D., and the master of arts in public policy with a certificate in research methods.

Faculty-led review prompted the shift
Inside Higher Ed reported that the revised plan was introduced in an email from Dean Nelson, stating it was based on “the strong recommendation of the PhD committee and department chairs.” She said that following her earlier announcement, she met with all department chairs and consulted with the faculty-led committee on Ph.D. programmes.

“Nearly all faculty leadership agreed that instead of admitting students to only a select number of departments, they preferred a broader pause for the division so we can spend time this coming year to collectively assess and better navigate the challenges we face,” Nelson stated in the email, as quoted by Inside Higher Ed.

Initial announcement surprised faculty
Dean Nelson acknowledged that her initial announcement caught many faculty members off guard. According to Inside Higher Ed, she explained that the timing was driven by deadlines to submit data to software platforms, which would have made the admissions decisions semi-public. She said she wanted the university community to be informed before that happened.

A department chair who spoke to Inside Higher Ed on condition of anonymity confirmed that most chairs supported a full pause to allow for more collaborative planning on the future of Ph.D. education within the division.

Wider context of financial challenges
The decisions come amid broader financial pressures at UChicago. As reported by Inside Higher Ed, several highly selective US universities, including Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania, have also recently frozen or scaled back Ph.D. programmes.

Clifford Ando, the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of Classics, History and the College, told Inside Higher Ed that “we easily have the resources to support the humanities without inflicting cuts disproportionate to the humanities’ role in creating the financial crisis.” He added that the university is “in the unique position of being a well-resourced university that has been so reckless with our resources that we now have to make decisions as if we were a poor one.”