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# Wichita State ends its philosophy major: what the Regents’ test counts
- URL: https://philocrux.com/wichita-state-philosophy-major-regents/
- Published: 2026-11-11T13:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-11T13:30:00.000Z
- Description: A two-year Regents process ended in a closure. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s idea of the university shows what a head count cannot measure.
- Author: Philosopheasy
- Tags: Society, Explainer, thinker-humboldt

Wichita State University will end its philosophy major in July 2027, [The Sunflower](https://thesunflower.com/110926/news/wsu-kills-foundation-of-academics/?ref=philocrux.com) and [Daily Nous](https://dailynous.com/2026/11/03/wichita-state-to-eliminate-philosophy-major/?ref=philocrux.com) reported on 2 and 3 November 2026\. Current majors can finish. Two years earlier the Kansas Board of Regents had placed the degree on an action plan for missing enrolment and degree-production requirements. Those rules count students and degrees, with graduates’ wages among the review’s stated aims, and not purpose.

## What did Wichita State decide?

Daily Nous, in a report by Justin Weinberg, said students “should no longer be able to major in philosophy” at the university. The Sunflower, the student newspaper, had the story a day earlier: news editor Kami Steinle reported that the programme ceases to exist in July 2027\. Daily Nous names President Richard Muma and Provost Monica Lounsbery as the officials behind the decision.

The closure comes at the end of a Regents process. According to The Sunflower, the board put the Bachelor’s in Philosophy on an action plan in 2024 for missing enrolment and degree-production requirements it had set in 2023\. The three-year plan ended in early 2026, and the programme had by then been restructured toward pre-law.

Philosophy chair Patrick Bondy told The Sunflower: “That’s frustrating and demoralizing; I think our whole department is feeling that.” Daily Nous relayed his argument that “a philosophy BA program is absolutely fundamental for a research university with liberal arts components to it.”

## What rule did the philosophy degree have to meet?

The Regents announced their review on 11 October 2023\. In a [news release on the Kansas Regents’ own site](https://kansasregents.gov/about/news-releases/2023-news-releases/868-board-of-regents-focuses-program-review-on-student-success-return-on-investment-and-jobs?ref=philocrux.com), the board said it would focus on programmes with “low enrollment, few graduates, and whose graduates do not typically find jobs with sustaining wages”. The release covered about 30 programmes and gave no numbers.

The numbers came from [Higher Ed Dive](https://www.highereddive.com/news/kansas-regents-to-review-undergrad-programs-some-will-be-on-the-chopping/654026/?ref=philocrux.com), which reported on 28 June 2023 that the 2023 metrics were at least 25 juniors or seniors majoring in a programme, at least 10 graduates, and a median salary five years after graduation of $38,050 or more. A programme failing two or more would be flagged.

Kansas Reflector reported, in a copy on the [Lawrence Times](https://lawrencekstimes.com/2024/06/06/kbor-evaluating-action-plans/?ref=philocrux.com), a slightly different enrolment test: 25 or more students enrolled in the programme and 10 or more graduates. Programmes that fell short had three options, one of them an action plan to lift the metrics within three years.

The Sunflower describes the philosophy plan as a response to missed enrolment and degree-production requirements. Wages are not what it names.

## Do the sources agree on what counts as a major?

They do not. The Kansas Reflector copy says 25 or more students enrolled. Higher Ed Dive says 25 juniors or seniors. Bondy told The Sunflower that the department first understood the rule as 25 majors and was later told it was “25 in junior or senior standing”. The two later accounts agree with each other. Dual degrees count, Bondy said, but certain double majors do not.

The difference is not cosmetic. A rule that counts every enrolled major measures how many students a department attracts. A rule that counts only juniors and seniors measures how many stay. The Reflector copy gives no period over which graduates are counted and says only “10 or more”. Higher Ed Dive says programmes are judged on a four-year average.

## What is the Regents’ stated case for the test?

It starts with the board’s own stated aim. The Regents said the review would weigh student interest, degrees earned, employment projections, state and regional need, and the impact on Kansas communities. Enrolment is a measure of student interest, and graduates’ wages are a measure of the return a student gets. On those terms a major that few students choose and fewer finish has a weak claim on resources.

The process was also not aimed at philosophy. About 30 programmes were under review, and the board gave those that missed the marks a stated way out: an action plan and three years to raise the numbers. On the Regents’ terms, a department given that runway and still short of the published marks has no claim on further resources. Whether it fell short depends on a counting rule the sources describe differently.

A private university nearby made a similar cut in the same month. In October 2023 [Daily Nous](https://dailynous.com/2023/10/30/newman-university-to-cut-philosophy-major/?ref=philocrux.com) reported that Newman University, a Catholic university in Wichita, was dropping philosophy and seven other majors. Its stated reason was a “strategic effort to realign educational offerings with changing student trends, market forces and emerging industry demands.” Newman answers to no Regents metric in that statement. Our reading: the logic is demand all the same.

## What does Humboldt explain about the dispute?

Wilhelm von Humboldt is the thinker whose idea of the university the test most obviously leaves out. The [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-humboldt/?ref=philocrux.com) describes the University of Berlin, founded in 1810, as a place “combining both teaching and research in one institution”, and as the model for “the modern university in most Western countries”. The entry glosses his term *Bildung* as self-realisation, or “self-culture”. Our gloss is that a university on this view forms persons rather than issuing credentials. It also records that he wanted the university independent of the state.

Our reading: Bondy’s argument echoes Humboldt’s. If a university is where teaching and research live together, a philosophy BA is part of its core, and a research university without one is a different institution. Angela Sager, a philosophy professor at Wichita State, put the purpose in terms close to *Bildung*: “We work because we care about enduring things like truth and meaning and beauty and the good.” The Regents’ metrics ask something else: whether enough students enrol, graduate and earn.

Humboldt breaks down at one point. He supplies a purpose, not a number. Nothing in his idea tells a board how small a department may be before it stops serving that purpose, and his demand for independence from the state sits awkwardly with a state university whose programmes are audited by a state board.

## What is the strongest objection?

The strongest objection is that we are holding the Regents to a standard they never claimed. They did not set out to measure self-culture. They set out to measure student interest, degrees and wages, published the marks, and offered three years to meet them. A board cannot be faulted for failing to count what it said it was not counting.

We accept the point on process and reject it on purpose. The test was announced and the runway was long. But a count of juniors, seniors and graduates is a ruling on demand. It cannot tell a board whether a research university should teach philosophy at all, and it was used to decide exactly that. Wichita State’s closure is a defensible demand ruling; in the reporting we have, the university has not said why the question Bondy raised should be answered the other way.

Watch for two things: whether the Regents publish the counting rules in full, including whether first- and second-year majors count and over what period the Reflector’s graduate count runs; and whether Wichita State explains the closure in its own words.

## Where to read next

- [Daily Nous](https://dailynous.com/2026/11/03/wichita-state-to-eliminate-philosophy-major/?ref=philocrux.com) on the Wichita State decision, 3 November 2026.
- [The Sunflower](https://thesunflower.com/110926/news/wsu-kills-foundation-of-academics/?ref=philocrux.com), the student paper that broke the story.
- [Higher Ed Dive](https://www.highereddive.com/news/kansas-regents-to-review-undergrad-programs-some-will-be-on-the-chopping/654026/?ref=philocrux.com) on the 2023 Regents metrics.
- Kansas Reflector’s report on action plans, in a copy on the [Lawrence Times](https://lawrencekstimes.com/2024/06/06/kbor-evaluating-action-plans/?ref=philocrux.com).
- The [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-humboldt/?ref=philocrux.com) entry on Humboldt.
- On a different argument about what an education is for, our explainer on [Nussbaum and Sen on the capabilities approach](https://philocrux.com/martha-nussbaum-capabilities-approach/).
- On credentials as a measure of learning, our earlier piece [Why Our Education System Is Broken?](https://philocrux.com/ivan-illich-deschooling-society-education-system-broken/)