Farewell to the Cal State Dominguez Hills 'HUX' external MA in Humanities

Sadly, one of the major pioneers in distance degrees is biting the dust. The Cal State University Dominguez Hills external Master's in Humanities is no longer accepting applications, and, after nearly 40 years and thousands of graduates, will be gone within a year. Main reason seems to be unpopularity of their new model -- replacing a very personal correspondence one-on-one program with a mass on-line approach.

I have told the story of how my wife, Marina, with her PhD in Philosophy (from Vanderbilt) was told she was unqualified to teach Philosophy in the California community college system, since Philosophy is in the Humanities department, which requires a Master's in Humanities. "I happen to have one of those, too" she said . . . and recently retired from fifteen very happy years teaching Philosophy at Berkeley City College.

 

Thanks for posting that, John. I didn't realize that they'd changed their delivery of the MA, which is a disappointment. I think their old school way of doing it was still the best, and, having explored the program myself about 17 years ago (my goodness, how time flies), had some real fondness for it as well.

 

Where did you hear this?

I just looked at their website and didn't see any notice that application are closed, let alone that the program is being terminated.

Master of Arts in the Humanities Online at California State University, Dominguez Hills

As a graduate of hux, I've long thought that its great defect was its lack of interactivity. It was a totally correspondence-based program, where students received reading and paper assignments in the mail, and where they submitted their papers by mail. Their only contact with professors all semester was whatever comments were on the returned and graded papers. From a graduate program perspective, that's extremely minimal.

So any attempt to increase students' ability to communicate with their professors is a very good thing in my estimation. I can't imagine it causing a big enough decline in student numbers to justify killing a self-supporting program like hux. If anything it should increase student numbers.

I'd guess that if student numbers are declining, it's due to hux tuition going up. I only paid $4,200 for my entire MA program in the late 1990's. It's way more than that now.

 

Looks like it's still going at $495/unit.

 

From Nicole Ballard, an administrator with HUX for nearly 20 years:

I am packing up my office in HUX (we're being moved from 850 s.f. of space
to two cubicles in the CEE administrative complex) and just ran across a letter
you sent from the "Not Your Mother's Cookbook" adventure. It reminded me
of how much fun working on that project was, as well as your support for the
HUX program throughout the years.

I am very sad to have to report HUX (or Legacy HUX as we're now calling it) is
in teach out and is no longer accepting applications for new students (except
from incarcerated students, which is a whole other matter). The correspondence
portion of the program has been largely superseded by "HUX 2.0", which is an
attempt to teach the program entirely online, with new courses and instructors.
HUX 2.0 is not doing very well because students appear to still want a traditional
Humanities master's degree (no matter the delivery method), with a research thesis
component, instead of a "smash and grab" fast food degree that culminates in a
mandated on-campus symposium as the capstone. There are 13 students who were
accepted into the first cohort. As of this date, there are only five applications for the
second cohort, which is scheduled to begin in Fall 2017. Some of us have doubts
it will sustain a second cohort.

The current dean of Extended Education (Marge Gordon retired four years ago) has
made it clear he is not a fan of either HUX and will be happy to see it gone once our
last legacy student has been graduated. After pouring nearly 20 years of my life into
HUX, you can imagine how this makes me feel. My retirement is not far off and I
have doubts I will be missed by the current administration.

Sorry to be the bringer of such ill tidings, but there you have it. I just wanted to take
an opportunity to once again thank you for your steadfast support over the years and
to wish you and yours the continuing best of what life has to offer.

 

While I have no need at this point for anything more formal than 'continuing education' classes, I still have a fondness for certain programs that have interested me over the years, and check in on them from time to time. I recalled John’s information from this thread and looked up the CSUDH HUX M.A., and found to my surprise that the program is listed as active in the 2019-2020 catalogue. Hoping that they had seen the error of their ways and reinstated it, I called the university, but I’m sorry to report that the catalogue committee evidently didn't get the memo. The staffer in Extended Education confirmed the existing students were taught out and the program is no more.

[Grumble grumble].

 

I know other such programs have been mentioned before, but for the sake of those who arrive at this thread searching for the HUX M.A. from an old Bear's Guide, there are some options I'll append here. Others may have more.

Salve Regina University, MA in Humanities: https://salve.edu/graduate-studies-and-continuing-education/humanities

Western New Mexico University, MA in Interdisciplinary Studies: https://interdisciplinary.wnmu.edu/graduate/masters/

 

That is a shame, I've considered it numerous times but never pulled the trigger. Soon there will be nothing but MBA and IT degrees...

 

Good for your wife! Yet, sad to hear that program is gone. Will look around to see if anyone, doubting this, offers a similar type of Masters degree via correspondence or online.

 

Got the answer I was looking for. Sad to hear it. Thanks for posting this. Appreciate it.