The University of Chicago has announced a dramatic and wide-ranging pause to new Ph.D. student admissions for the 2026/27 academic year, citing a need to "undertake a comprehensive review" of its graduate program offerings.

Prospective Ph.D. students can still apply to the Music Composition and Sound Practices program, but doctoral applications are not being accepted for students in Music Theory, Music History, or Ethnomusicology.

Alongside these disciplines, the university is also pausing graduate admissions in 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, and South Asian languages and civilizations.

According to division dean Deborah Nelson, the pause "is not the recommendation of any committee."

Nelson later reversed that announcement, stating in an email that the revised plan is "based on the strong recommendation of the PhD committee and department chairs."

"After the announcement last week, I met with all department chairs and consulted with the faculty-led committee on PhD programs," Nelson wrote in a later statement. "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."

"We easily have the resources to support the humanities without inflicting cuts disproportionate to the humanities’ role in creating the financial crisis," said Clifford Ando, the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of Classics, History and the College.

"We are 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," he added.