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Andrew Holbrook typically has two conversations with prospective students and their families about the music therapy program he oversees at Ohio University.
The first, he said, is with students who want to talk about combining their love of music and helping people.
“With them I often talk about the functionality of how we use music to, say, reduce pain perception, or to improve gait for victims of a stroke, or to evoke emotional expression, and work with people with mental health conditions,” he said.
The second is with their parents. Holbrook said they “almost always” flag him down shortly thereafter with one question: What are the chances of my kid getting a job?
He tells them that career opportunities are “pretty vast, especially in the state of Ohio,” he said. He highlights program graduates who provide medical music therapy in hospital intensive care units. Others, he said, get hired by private practices to then work in schools or retirement communities.
Those conversations are set to end soon. Senate Bill 1, a state law overhauling how public higher education works, requires institutions to end undergraduate programs that produce an average of five or fewer graduates annually over a three-year period.
OU’s music therapy program didn’t meet that threshold. Holbrook said it graduated 14 students during that time, one shy of the requirement.
Behavioral and mental health counselors – though not music therapists specifically – appear on the state’s “top jobs” list, with a median salary of $57,000. Athens County, home to the university’s main campus, and surrounding nearby rural areas all have a shortage of mental health professionals. OU’s music therapy program is one of only a handful of such offerings in Ohio and across the Appalachian region.
Supporters say the impact of ending the program will ripple far outside the university. Spearheaded by a group of alumni, advocates recently launched an impassioned online push to reverse the program’s fate. An online petition has already received more than 8,500 signatures and more than 100 comments.
“This closure will hurt people in need all over Ohio,” one wrote. “It is devastating not only for students who have a passion for music and health as a career, but for those in Ohio who can benefit from music therapy.”
Ohio higher ed officials unlikely to reverse course
A reversal of the state’s decision about OU’s music therapy degree seems unlikely.
Ohio University’s leadership already tried to make a case for the program. The Ohio Department of Higher Education allows institutions to submit a waiver request for programs that don’t hit the enrollment threshold in hopes of keeping these low-enrollment degrees alive a bit longer.
The waiver must detail plans for how a university will revitalize a program, including a four-year plan to boost enrollment and how it aligns with local workforce needs.
Last summer, OU submitted seven waiver requests to the department, including for the music therapy program. They asked to continue the majors due “to their alignment with the workforce needs of the state or the unique nature of the program.”
Holbrook said he and his colleagues felt confident their application would get approved.
“The people that we had talked to had all said our waiver was one of the best written,” he said.
Yet the ODHE denied the request. OU officials told Signal Statewide its waiver requests for a Bachelor of Applied Science in hospitality management and a Bachelor of Arts in dance also got rejected, though similar four-year degrees in those areas will still be offered.
Program supporters may be running out of options. In an email to Signal Statewide, ODHE officials said the existing waiver process is the sole way for institutions to make an appeal. The department will reconsider a denial only in “circumstances involving the omission of substantive data or information from the original waiver request,” officials wrote.
Ohio’s four-year universities have submitted a total of 57 waivers to the ODHE, according to data provided to Signal Statewide. The department has approved 16 – slightly less than a third – of those asks as of March 31.
The majority of Ohio colleges already regularly evaluated academic offerings before Senate Bill 1 took effect in June 2025. It’s a common practice across higher education.
But the state law expedites those procedures. The legislation’s author, State Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, said cutting programs with few students is necessary for Ohio’s colleges to “right-size themselves.”
What comes next for Ohio University’s music therapy program
The 45 students currently enrolled in Ohio University’s music therapy program will be able to finish the program. Beginning this fall, new students will not be able to start this or any of the 15 other offerings the university is also ending due to Senate Bill 1’s requirements.
The program already held auditions and admitted students for the fall 2026 semester, according to Holbrook. Several parents of those incoming students also shared their disappointment in the petition’s comment section.
“She made this career decision just to have it diminished and now she is at the beginning and devastated,” one wrote of their daughter. “She was so excited to start this journey just to have it crushed.”
Now, Holbrook said there are lots of conversations happening about trying to find a way to “continue these services.” He said the director of the university’s music school has been supportive, and they’ve spoken with a large national music therapy advocacy group.
OU’s graduate program in music therapy still remains. Yet Holbrook said he’s also concerned about its future, since the undergraduate program serves as a feeder to the advanced degree.
Still, he said he and other supporters remain “cautiously optimistic” about this Hail Mary attempt to save the program.
“We just want to keep at it,” he said. “We’re hoping that we can eventually reach and change someone’s mind that can have an effect.”
