Somewhere in upstate New York, Syracuse University looked at its course catalog (apparently the academic equivalent of a hoarder’s attic) and said, with admirable calm, “This no longer sparks enrollment.”

Eighty-four majors. Gone. Or paused. Or gently escorted to the existential waiting room where discontinued things go to reflect on their purpose. Among the dearly departed: Classics, Italian, ceramics, sculpture, and painting. Essentially the ghosts of humanities past and the entire cast of a very chic artisanal Etsy shop.

In total, 93 out of 460 programs. Which raises my first and most pressing question. 460 programs??
Who knew? That course catalog must have doubled as a weighted blanket. A doorstop. A subtle upper-body workout. If they still printed it, you could probably press flowers in it and emerge with a minor in botany.

The official reasoning is tidy. They are to be “more focused, more distinctive, more aligned with student demand.” Translation is that fewer students are signing up to conjugate verbs in Italian while shaping clay bowls that cost $80,000 in tuition to produce.

And listen, there’s logic here. We are living in the Age of Practicality. Everyone is talking about trades, skills, ROI, and not emerging from college with both a diploma and a personality disorder induced by Sallie Mae. If you can learn ceramics at a community studio for the price of one campus latte, perhaps it does feel inefficient to major in it at elite tuition levels.

But also can we pause and appreciate the quiet tragedy here?

Because what’s being trimmed isn’t just enrollment numbers. It’s the slow, meandering, gloriously impractical parts of being human. The parts that say that

“Yes, I will study Classics, not because it leads to a job titled ‘Senior Latin Strategist,’ but because reading ancient texts might make me slightly less insufferable at dinner parties and slightly more aware that humans have always been dramatic.”

Or:
“I will learn Italian not because Excel demands it, but because someday I might stand in a piazza and order espresso like I belong there.”

Or:
“I will shape clay, poorly, because turning mud into something that holds water feels like small, defiant magic.”

And here’s where it gets psychologically interesting (you knew I waa going there).

We are, collectively, optimizing. Trimming. Streamlining. Becoming “aligned with demand.” But human beings are not, at our core, demand-driven creatures. We are curiosity-driven, meaning-making, occasionally ridiculous creatures. We fall in love with things that make no economic sense. We take classes that don’t “lead anywhere” and then they lead everywhere. To a conversation. A relationship. A way of seeing.

The danger isn’t that universities are cutting programs. The danger is that we start to believe the only things worth learning are the things that can justify their existence in a spreadsheet.

Because if that’s the case, someone should probably take a hard look at:

Poetry
Philosophy
Many of my life choices

And yet.

There’s also something oddly honest about this moment. Maybe universities are finally admitting what many students already know. Not everything belongs inside a $70,000/year ecosystem. Some things are better learned in smaller, scrappier, more human spaces. Studios. Kitchens. Side streets. Late-night YouTube spirals.

So perhaps the question isn’t “Why is Syracuse cutting ceramics?”

Maybe it’s where do we now go to become people who still care about ceramics?

Because if the institutions won’t hold that space, we’ll have to. In quieter ways. Less credentialed, more intentional.

We’ll read the old books anyway.
We’ll learn the language anyway.
We’ll make the lopsided bowl anyway.

And maybe that bowl, made without a syllabus, will hold something even more valuable.

The radical, inefficient, deeply human act of learning something simply because it makes life feel a little more like life.