This Inside Higher Ed piece describes how the University of Southern Mississippi decided to shut down its economics department, it was not productive:

Much of the justification for eliminating the economics department was tied to student demand. An outline of the plan drafted by the committee notes that the program has “less than five graduates per year,”

That is how decisions ought to get made in the real world. My only question is this, would USM or any university facing financial troubles, have the temerity to eliminate the Department of Cherokee Poetry Studies on similar grounds? Or the German language department?