Imagine showing up to class one morning and discovering that the entire reason you chose your college just got eliminated. That’s the gut punch SUNY Fredonia students are facing this May as the university announced cuts to 10 undergraduate programs, four graduate programs, and seven minors—all in the name of closing an $8.1 million structural deficit.
The numbers look small on paper. About 111 students are enrolled across these programs as majors, and roughly 60 in associated minors—less than 5% of Fredonia’s total student population, according to university leadership. But percentages don’t tell the real story. For seniors like Tatum Erickson, a Communications-Audio/Radio major and production director for Fredonia Radio Systems, the cuts represent something far more personal: the dismantling of a pathway she specifically chose Fredonia to follow. As Erickson put it plainly, if that major hadn’t existed when she applied, she wouldn’t have come to the school at all.
This isn’t the first time Fredonia has wielded the budget axe. The university previously cut 13 programs, including Philosophy and Early Childhood Education. Hunter Halterman, a 2024 graduate of the Audio/Radio program, watched those earlier cuts unfold. He credits the program’s professors and classes with teaching him the technical backbone of radio work—the deep knowledge about levels, EQing, and production craft that doesn’t materialize out of thin air. Now he’s watching the same major that shaped his career disappear for incoming students. As he sees it, the real question isn’t whether the university can trim 5% of enrollments; it’s whether Fredonia can survive if it keeps betting that cutting programs strengthens the institution rather than weakening it.
Dr. Stephen H. Kolison Jr., SUNY Fredonia’s president, has framed these decisions as necessary medicine. The university is working toward balancing its budget by the 2028-2029 fiscal year, he explained, and holding onto programs with declining student demand only delays the reckoning. He’s also been clear that the on-campus radio station will survive, funded through student accounts rather than the academic department. That’s something, at least.
But the timing—and the messaging—have rubbed students the wrong way. The announcement came after commencement, when most students had scattered across the state and country. For Erickson and others, the decision to release this information after the semester ended felt deliberate, a way to sidestep the campus confrontation that erupted during previous cuts. Kolison pushed back, noting that consultations ran right up through the Friday before the announcement, but his explanation doesn’t change how it landed.
The real worry, though, goes deeper than program cuts or administrative optics. It’s about ripple effects. When technical expertise walks out the door because there’s no major pipeline feeding talent into the radio station and other campus media, something intangible gets lost. The knowledge transfer, the mentorship, the culture of production excellence—that stuff doesn’t happen by accident. And once it’s gone, it’s not always easy to rebuild.
