Doane ending five majors, four minors in fall 2027, current students able to finish programs

Doane University will sunset five majors and four minors starting in the 2027-2028 academic year.

The move is part of the “Doane Forward” plan, which Doane University President Roger Hughes said is an initiative to meet the needs of students while staying competitive.

“This plan was not designed overnight,” Hughes said. “It took us about six months to put it together, looking at every possible angle we could to make sure that we didn't change what Doane is.”

The five majors that will be eliminated are:

• New media
• Strategic communication
• Policy and values
• Ethics and interfaith studies
• Human relations

The four minors are:

• Film
• Journalism
• Communicating quantitative information
• Communication/environmental communication

Hughes said there are about 80 students on the Doane campus in Crete and online that will be impacted by program changes. All of them will have the ability to finish their pathways.

The faculty that will help teach out the programs will still be employed for the 2026-27 school year, Hughes said. He added that Doane offered a voluntary separation program for faculty and staff, and about 15 people took it.

“We kept that number as low as we could, while still gaining the reduction in expenses that we need, while still providing the portfolio of classes and majors that our students want,” Hughes said. “It was a huge balancing act, and time will tell if we came out on the right end, but right now, we try to minimize any type of detriment to the student especially, and to our employees as much as we could.”

Hughes did not say how much money Doane is hoping to save with the cuts, but the DoaneLine, Doane's student news publication, reported in April that departments were being asked to prepare draft budgets with cuts ranging anywhere from 13% to 20%. It's not known if those plans were implemented.

The changes at Doane come at a time when higher education is facing challenges in Nebraska and across the country.

The University of Nebraska Board of Regents voted in December to eliminate four programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as part of $27.5 million in budget cuts. In April, the Regents voted to also eliminate four programs at the University of Nebraska at Kearney to close a $4.5 million budget hole.

In October, Nebraska Wesleyan University eliminated 14 staff positions and reduced three others from full time to part time.

At a conference, Hughes said heard a statistic that every month, a school like Doane will close. Hughes also said parents and students are questioning the value of higher education.

“We could have waited to do this, but it's better to do it now while you still have resources available that can allow you to take advantage of the opportunities going forward,” Hughes said. “Unfortunately, this is a symptom of what all of higher ed’s going to.”

Although these programs are ending, Hughes said the university is looking at teaching the same skills in other areas that match up more with market demands.

“Communication would be one of the departments that we looked at,” Hughes said. “There are other ways to teach that through the business school or through other places. It's going to be a little bit market driven, from the standpoint of what do our customers want and what do employers want.”

He also pointed to a new innovation center being built on campus that will include engineering, business, AI, computer science, data analytics and mathematics. Doane officials worked with business and engineering CEOs to come up with ideas for those programs.

“At the end of the day, if our students aren't getting good outcomes, jobs or professional school admissions, then we need to look at what we're doing, because we're here to serve the young adults,” Hughes said.

With this new partnership between engineering and business, Hughes said Doane is looking to have a program for a four-year engineering degree plus a one-year master of business administration.

Hughes said Doane will continue to lean into what makes it distinctive from other colleges — smaller class sizes, teacher-student bonds and helping students succeed in their post-graduate plans.

“It's one of the old cliches I heard is we don't tell them what to think, but we show them how to think going forward, so they can develop and grow and become the leaders that we expect them to become,” Hughes said.