How popular is linguistics?

<p>This is my major and while I know it varies depending on the school, in general, how popular in this major (just out of curiosity)?</p>

<p>I'm curious about this too. Not that I'm interested in linguistics, but it seems to me that a either a school doesn't offer it as a major, or possible linguistic majors go for english isntead</p>

<p>well, this is the third thread on linguistics on the first page of CC so maybe that gives you an idea :-)</p>

<p>I think many of the major universities have the major as an option....my school has about 40ish majors in the department, which is a nice size.</p>

<p>My school has it, as does MIT, and many, many other schools. How popular is it? I don't know, how can you really say that? I've never seen a compiled list of how many people or what percentage of college students major in linguistics. Then again, I haven't seen this list for many subject areas. Why does English seem like the thing people interested in language go for? I'm sure many of them actually major in a language, such as German or French or Spanish or Arabic or another language if they are unable to do linguistics. At schools where you can design your own major, one could string together classes in philosophy and English and history and other subjects such as Political Science or Psychology to create a substitute.</p>