Suicide on Sociology Row

No state matches Florida in higher education reform. Its landmark Senate Bill 266, passed during the 2023 legislative session, abolished DEI offices. It also requires general education reform in state universities and colleges. 

Few reforms simply implement themselves. The rubber of implementation started hitting university roads in 2023. Florida’s Board of Governors (BOG), which oversees the entire university system, put forward a rule to remove Sociology 1000: The Principles of Sociology as part of general education reform. Final BOG approval came in early 2024. Then Florida’s college system removed Sociology 1000 from its 28 schools in April 2024. Beginning in Fall 2024, Sociology 1000 would not be in Florida’s general education core. Anywhere. 

Sociology 2000 remained to fulfill general education requirements. But then, earlier this year, Florida sociologists bragged about how they were defying the state “restrictions on race and gender.” In response, Florida’s BOG removed Sociology 2000 from the general education core in March. 

“Sociology as a discipline is now social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy,” said Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System’s BOG, as the BOG cut Sociology 2000. Sociology, as I have argued, is unfit for general education. Others think sociology has descended into woke parody. Sociology indeed, as another insider writes, has committed intellectual suicide.

Sociology as a discipline has been bleeding students for more than a decade. Now, in Florida, sociology must compete for students without the assistance of being in general education, where departments can generally count on some enrollment because students must meet some requirement. Sociologists know that their jobs are on the line if enrollments do not stay sufficiently robust. Leaving the general education system may lead to program review, shrinkage, or elimination. 

Florida’s reforms, most likely, make a bad enrollment situation for sociology in Florida worse. The changes initiated in Fall 2024 have already had a dramatic effect on sociology enrollments. The changes so far are harbingers of even bigger changes. 

Indeed, the drop in the number of sociology majors in Florida’s State University System has been dramatic. According to BOG numbers, Florida departments of sociology awarded a total of 778 bachelor’s degrees in 2019-2020, but only 499 in 2023-2024. Florida’s 36% decline in sociology majors is nearly twice the national average of approximately 20%. That was before the general education reform.

The number of sociology majors at University of Florida fell from 492 in Fall 2020 to 284 in Fall 2025, a 42% decline. Florida Atlantic University (FAU) went from 123 to 55 majors in Fall 2024. FIU from 96 to 19. FSU from 131 to 83. Florida A&M remains in the teens.

Remarkably, only the University of Central Florida has defied the trend, growing slightly from 2020 to Fall 2024. However, as the general education reforms come online, UCF will soon look more like the rest of Florida. . After all, lower division courses are pipelines to upper-division courses and majors. Evidence from UCF suggests that the pipeline is getting narrower. According to data acquired through a public records request, the number of students in introductory classes at UCF was 1,101 before the reforms in 2023 and had tanked to 609 in 2025—over a 43% decline in just two years. Lower-division numbers may crater more when Sociology 2000 is removed in Fall 2026.

Declines in the upper division are also happening at UCF. UCF Sociology produced 8,503 upper division SCH in Fall 2020, but only 5,717 in Fall 2025, nearly a 33% decrease. Soon upper-division SCH will decline more and then majors will decline dramatically. 

UCF’s Sociology Department has, according to its website, six full professors, including three that list their personal pronouns; six associate professors (three with personal pronouns); four assistant professors; and several lecturers and adjuncts. That level of staffing may not survive the marked decline in enrollments and the upcoming declines in the number of majors.

Like UCF, FAU saw dramatic dips in overall credits. The number of students in sociology’s introductory classes went from 556 in 2023 to 401 in 2025, according to data from the public records request. Sociology’s total SCH went from around 23,500 in 2020-21 to 10,749 in 2025-26, over a 50% decrease in just six academic years. FAU’s around nine tenured and tenure-track faculty may also face cuts if such trends continue.

According to the public records request, enrollments in sociology’s introductory classes across the system declined markedly from 2023 to 2025. Florida A&M went from 278 to 120; Florida Gulf Coast from 398 to 195; Florida State from 479 to 361; University of South Florida from 771 to 652; West Florida from 160 to 100. Only Florida International and University of North Florida defied the trends, a remarkable fact requiring some investigation as to whether they are adhering to the law (FIU’s number of sociology students in introductory classes went from 407 in 2023 to 614 in 2025).

Steep enrollment drops, when combined with sociology’s inherent corruption, make program review an inevitability. Program reviews are usually conducted at universities with budget problems. Committees are formed. Metrics guide evaluations. Underperforming departments that do not also meet the special needs of the university mission are forced either to shrink or are eliminated. University of Wyoming has, over the years, provided classic economic program reviews. Other universities have as well. Many more will be doing so as schools approach the demographic cliff.

Florida’s SB 266 from 2023 imagines a much more expansive, missional element to program review. Florida’s BOG to “periodically review the mission of each constituent university and…review existing academic programs for alignment with the mission” with special focus on programs that are “based on theories [that] systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.” If, as Chancellor Rodriguez says, “sociology as a discipline is now social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy,” BOG has the predicate to initiate something much wider and more decisive than traditional program review. Sociology, like gender studies, must be on the chopping block. 

In fact, sociology presents a combination of enrollment decline and ideologically-corrupt disciplinary standards. As enrollments in Florida’s university system grow, sociology’s decline has accelerated. Its removal from general education is bound to accelerate that acceleration. Its faculty have, in some respects, been unapologetic in their defiance of state program standards. The BOG knows that disciplinary standards are corrupt and that the faculty are defiant. The BOG has been willing to take all the preliminary steps to remedy the situation. The big gun, program review, is the next logical step.

When Gov. DeSantis became governor in 2019, no one would have imagined that his tenure in office could mean the demise of sociology as a discipline in Florida’s university system. Perhaps, when he leaves office after two successful terms, woke will still be on the run and woke sociology will have gone to die too. 

More salutary would be if other states pick up the mantle of general education reform. Legislatures have plenary power over requirements, and they should use it like Florida and reap the benefits. 

Scott Yenor is director of the Kenneth B. Simon Center for American Politics at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a professor of political science at Boise State University.