This story was originally produced by The Keene Sentinel. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
Fourteen academic programs have been paused at Keene State College, the college’s provost said Thursday.
The programs — which include five majors, seven minors, one master’s program and one certificate program — were put on administrative hold because of faculty retirements, staffing challenges, low enrollments and redundancies across New Hampshire’s university and community college systems, according to Kirsti Sandy, Keene State’s provost and vice president of academic affairs.
While an administrative hold is in place, students cannot enroll in the program, Sandy said. Students who are currently enrolled in the programs will be able to graduate within them, and the college will still offer courses in those areas, she said.
“It’s essential that we continue the hard work as an institution of ensuring that we are serving our students and the state of NH; this requires, at times, making strategic and difficult decisions such as program holds and eliminations,” she wrote. “We cannot sit, frozen in time, refusing to change, but our mission remains a strong guiding force. It’s a delicate balance shared by most institutions of higher learning in the current moment.”
Academic program decisions are made through the faculty senate and the college’s provost office, Director of Marketing Sarah Kossayda said in a Wednesday email to The Sentinel.
On the college’s online academic catalog, a message across the top of each affected program’s webpage states, “This program is on Administrative Hold as of Fall 2026. No new students may enroll at this time.”
The on-hold majors include Bachelor of Arts in political science, Bachelor of Science in sustainability studies, Bachelor of Arts in environmental studies, Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Bachelor of Science in education, early childhood development.
The minors — a secondary area of study alongside one’s main degree — comprise early childhood development, political science, human resource management, campaigns and elections, medieval and early modern studies, geography and Spanish.
A Master of Arts in Holocaust and genocide studies and a certificate in applied genocide prevention are also on hold.
Three of the programs — Bachelor of Science in education, early childhood development; Bachelor of Arts in Spanish; and minor in early childhood development — went on hold last year, Sandy said. There are no students in some of the on-hold minors, including campaigns and elections, medieval and early modern studies, geography and human resource management.
The holds come amid ongoing financial turbulence at Keene State. The college has been battling low enrollment for years, and last summer, the N.H. Legislature made $18 million in cuts to the University System of New Hampshire, which worked out to be a roughly $4 million loss for Keene State.
In addition to Keene State, the public university system includes Plymouth State University and the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
Keene State’s budget deficit sat at $3.3 million in March, Interim President Donald Birx told The Sentinel at the time.
In December, the college was discussing grouping or suspending some programs, though no concrete plans had been made, Kossayda said then.
In response to an emailed question asking whether the on-hold programs could be grouped together, suspended or cut, Provost Sandy said that there was a likelihood of all three, as those are the three options for programs on administrative hold. In some cases, faculty and administration decide to put a program on hold because they mean to rename and revise it, she said.
“Sometimes programs are revised and rejuvenated, sometimes they are phased out, and sometimes they are combined with other programs,” she wrote. There is also no timeline for the holds.
Asked if faculty and staff members in the on-hold programs could be laid off, Sandy said that it would be “premature to speculate,” but that some of the programs on hold had already lost staff due to retirement or voluntary separations.
In response to its budget deficit, the college cut 25 staff positions last November, and another 12 faculty members volunteered to take separation packages, a college spokesperson said on Nov. 20, 2025.
The holds are not related to the recent reorganization of Keene State into three schools, Kossayda said in an email to The Sentinel Wednesday. Birx said in March the college was taking steps to address its deficit and falling enrollment, which included restructuring into a trio of schools: Applied Sciences & Technology; Arts & Sciences; and Education & Health, Social & Behavioral Sciences.
As the job market is in constant fluctuation, the college has been looking to add programs based on the needs of students and employers, Sandy said. There are more than 60 degree programs at Keene State, with some of its newer offerings including accounting, data analytics, optics and construction management.
Interim President Birx told The Sentinel in late September that Keene State’s one-year optics program will be part of a larger strategy at the college to combine education and industry for people who may not be interested in a four-year degree.
That initiative, which Birx said would be announced in late October and launched in 2027, would include more career-readiness programs and internships.
