Education Department names Towson University in press release on ‘closing’ gender studies, program still exists

By Sarah Sternhagen, Editor-in-Chief

The U.S. Department of Education released a list of eight universities, including Towson University, that recently closed their women’s and gender studies programs, saying it was a victory against “gender extremism.” 

The press release said that the closures are a result of President Donald Trump’s reforms to higher education and the “lack of workforce-benefitting skills” women’s and gender studies programs provide. 

Despite being listed, Towson students can still major and minor in the field.

Towson’s gender studies department will no longer be a standalone department in Fall 2026 due to declining major enrollment. Instead, it’s being absorbed into the Interdisciplinary Programs which houses other degrees like the African and African American Studies minor and the International Studies major.

University officials said Towson did not eliminate any academic programming by changing the Women’s and Gender Studies department to a program, only reorganized it to better fit student needs. No faculty were dismissed because of the change.

Towson’s current Department Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies Cindy Gissendanner said the Education Department’s insinuation that a degree in gender studies is useless in the workforce is not true.

“The skills that women’s and gender studies majors have upon graduation are also things that a number of studies of employers show are valued skills,” Gissendanner said. “Writing, research, communication, critical thinking, ability to work in diverse workplaces.”

She also pointed to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on the projected average earning for cultural and group degrees, which gender studies falls under. The median annual wage of someone with a degree in cultural or group studies in 2023 was $68,000. 

The Education Department previously designated “low-earning” college degrees as any degree that on average earns less than a person with only a high school diploma, which was $41,800 annually in 2023.

The department claimed seven other universities had closed women’s and gender studies programs: East Carolina University, New College of Florida, Texas A&M University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Iowa, the University of Toledo, and Wichita State University. 

However, several of those universities also still allow students to study women’s and gender studies in some capacity.

Texas A&M University and Wichita State University still offer a major and minor. East Carolina University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Toledo still offer minors in their gender studies programs. The University of California at Santa Cruz still lets students get a degree with an emphasis in feminist studies, which is like a minor but with fewer required credits.

New College of Florida outright ended all women’s and gender studies programs in 2024 after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed trustees to the school, who voted for the program’s dismantlement. 

Gissendanner said the federal government’s push against women’s and gender studies was new to the field.

“I don’t think there’s been another presidential administration that was quite so aggressive,” Gissendanner said. “For a lot of professors it feels very threatening.”

The Education Department did not respond to request for comment.