The Decline/Rethinking of The Humanities Major

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I’ve only been actively reading CC for about a year, but in addition to #1, 2, and 3, there are some detours that happen along the way in these threads. Lots of rabbit hole discussions about career paths in tech, banking and management consulting including declarations from people who hire/recruit college graduates --some say they will hire humanities students and others say they will only hire STEM students. Virtually no one discusses other careers or vocations that are important to the functioning of our society and the well-being (health and happiness) of its citizens. It seems like the idea is that if those careers were actually important, they would be highly paid, which also seems silly to me because while I could live (and probably be happier) without some forms of technology like Facebook or my iPhone, I would have been a miserable teen without the talented teachers that I encountered and I know plenty of people who would not have survived various hard times in their lives without their pastors or therapists.

And my personal favorite, there is often a detour where posters imply or outright claim that STEM fields are more rigorous and require more intellectual power than humanities fields. As someone with degrees in both areas, this one always puzzles me since it truly has not been my experience either as a student or when I was a teacher. I did finally realize that some people are defining “rigorous” as more difficult to get an ‘A’ in a particular course or how much students have to grind to get through a particular major. That is not how I would define a field as rigorous or non-rigorous, but I will concede that grading policies are often different across courses (and teachers). It doesn’t make sense to me to define a field by the grading curve that teachers choose to use, and to base assertions about the rigor of a field on the grading policies of its teachers seems as silly as basing those assertions on SAT percentiles in the EBRW and Math subtests.

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Arguably the most valuable profession on earth, SAHM, is one that has never paid anyone a dime. Until people recognize and embrace the concept of non-monetary value, this topic can’t even be discussed, acted upon, etc.

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Maybe the real problem with the decline in humanities majors is exactly what is happening in this and other similar threads. We are polarized in our thinking about what to study in college - STEM vs. Humanities. Sad but not surprising, as we are polarized in so much of our thinking in today’s world.

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There may be some places in which this is true, but it’s not generally the case. But my point doesn’t require it to be true, so even if you were right (which you are not) it would not matter. What I’m arguing is that the Humanities is valuable. If you want to major in it, that’s fine. If you want to minor, that’s fine. If you want to just take courses in it, that’s fine. How and to what degree and interested person is exposed to it is fine - what is wrong is the orientation that our society has that dissuades people from those exposures (at whatever level) because it doesn’t maximize income, or because it has no value in other ways.

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I just wanted to add (in case it isn’t obvious) that I also believe that STEM scholars make massive contributions to society as well. Personally that is why I decided to study an engineering field as an undergraduate. I wanted my work to contribute to a greater good at 18. I still do. I did not mean to sound dismissive about stem careers because that does not actually reflect my belief about the importance of the many various career paths for students who study science, math, and engineering. I think that I was just trying to say that one’s salary does not define the importance of one’s work. There are many low paid careers that are essential to a healthy society and I am so utterly bored with the implication that the worthiness of a degree is defined by the starting (or even ending) salary of its graduates.

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Additional barriers to entry for majors or courses* are typically used to avoid exceeding instructional capacity. It does not seem like this is a common issue with humanities majors or courses, except sometimes arts.

*Like more competitive admission to major in frosh/transfer admission, GPA higher than 2.0 to declare major, or competitive admission to declare major.

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Are you certain it is society that is discouraging people from exposure in tertiary education or that people are genuinely not interested in these topics ( which I find regrettable but more likely)? If K-12 students are not eagerly reading literature, poetry, foreign languages, etc, why are we surprised that most don’t take those courses willingly in college?

Interestingly, somewhere in my reading I came across a report of the demographic change in English majors. Few men ever actually majored in English. The decline in enrollment is attributable to far fewer women majoring in it now than before, and the corresponding increase in female enrollment in previously male-dominated fields like engineering and math. If that is not a bad thing ( I hope most would agree) then perhaps the decline is nothing to worry about.

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But wouldn’t one major’s courses cover general education requirements relative to the other?

Of course, if one or both majors is voluminous with requirements, that may be difficult. Music performance + mechanical engineering is likely harder to fit together than philosophy + math.

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That’s why I think colleges should take a different look at this issue. They shouldn’t enroll the number of students purely based on their departmental capacities.

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Colleges awash with money can afford to allow more department capacity to go unused. But these colleges are usually the most selective ones to begin with, where student capabilities to do various majors is unlikely to be much of an issue. Most colleges, from a financial and business perspective, would not want to force more capacity to be unused than they have already.

What would you suggest the minimum criteria for doing a major in humanities should be?

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Given tenure, faculty costs for colleges are largely fixed and not dependent upon supply and demand market forces. Colleges will need to retain the same tenured faculty regardless of whether their courses are empty or full, absent eliminating the entire department, which rarely occurs.

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A college would rather use the capacity of those humanities departments whose cost is fixed with tuition paying students rather than leave the capacity unused.

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Then one would expect it is significantly easier to be admitted as a humanities student to such colleges, and restrictions on students transferring out of such a major to a more popular course of study. Perhaps that occurs at such colleges?

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Assuming for the moment that the goal is more humanities majors, I see two major reasons for the decline, both of which we’ve discussed here.

One is inadequate exposure and/or preparation in high school. What colleges can do about this I need to think about for a bit.

The other big issue is that students today are much more interested in majors with a direct path to a job. I admit this was one reason I chose the major I did, over 30 years ago. There were lots of subjects I found interesting, but simply didn’t know what kind of job I could get with them, or how to go about it. And I didn’t really know where to get that information; my own family background was no help, so I was completely on my own for finding resources.

I think there are things colleges can do about this, and many of them are trying, to varying degrees. One thing I often see on the websites of humanities and similar departments is a “what can I do with a major in X?” page. The best ones go into practical details about what skills you’ll learn, and specific types of jobs that value those skills, including what recent grads are doing.

Another thing colleges can do is offer good advising, especially for undecided students. This needs to start first semester freshman year. It should include the usual strategic course planning, but also what skills and experience to develop outside the classroom (more important for the majors without clear paths to a particular job), where to find good information on employment opportunities such as informational interviews and networking, and more.

This can come from actual student advisors, as well as workshops and webinars, career services, individual departments who sponsor guest lectures from previous grads or employers who hire those grads, and so on. I’m sure others can add even more examples.

I don’t know if these things would change what majors students choose, but I think they are worth trying.

ETA: the more I think about this, the more it boils down to these departments needing to market themselves more effectively.

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I suppose there is another pre-question that I missed posing. Whose goal is it to have more humanities majors? Or is it the view that this is for the societal good? i.e., society doesn’t know that it is consuming education in an unhealthy manner at the moment, and the attempt is to reform current practice?

But leaving that aside …

This has come in part from inside academia. After all number of hours spent on english or history in high school did not decline. But there has been a move towards a) newer kinds of literature, b) newer approaches to the same literature, c) a lot of post modern thinking about what not to teach from the past, and d) finally, rethinking of what is an acceptable load for a high school education

This is always a good thing, especially in the age of 350k college bills (and let’s not say what 350k – society is paying this even if some individual is not. And I am paying this in full if i go private). You are right – academic departments will need to hold themselves responsible holistically – kids will come back and study what they love if they are shown how to live reasonably after that. As an example, USouthern California encourages it’s film oriented majors to get an additional major or minor, just in case plan A doesn’t work out.

Completely agree with you on this.

Nothing is a magic bullet, but these changes will help.

The word “marketing” suggests that it is all a perception problem. I don’t think it is all perception. I think some changes in substance will also help in reducing the risks inherent in non-vocational majors. The plan B will not be pre-decided (so it can be a part of the undergrad education) rather than spending another 2 or 3 years on grad school that can cost 100-200k or more.

Often just a handful of non humanities courses would make the humanities majors more productive in jobs that need humanities, and should lead to better hiring conditions, and therefore make kids more comfortable taking these majors.

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This is only true in the short term. New hires are allocated according to demand, and almost across the board, STEM disciplines are getting those new hires while humanities departments are shrinking through attrition, until the point that departments and majors are eliminated, which is happening more and more often. This is the death spiral that makes the humanities less appealing to study, with no “new blood” to cover new topics, while job opportunities simultaneously shrink.

Witness Marymount “University”'s elimination of majors in English, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and History (along with Economics, Mathematics, and others).

Once a major is no longer offered, you don’t need to maintain the department, and can simply teach a few service courses (writing, etc.) with adjuncts.

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Additional restrictions are generally applied when trying to get into an overloaded major. This is not surprising if you have been around these forums and noticed all of the threads about students wanting to major in CS and applying for popular state flagships and similarly-selective private schools. Humanities majors other than sometimes arts majors are rarely among the overloaded majors where this is an issue, so getting into the college at its baseline selectivity is sufficient, and getting into the major from an undeclared state or another major tends to need no more than C grades or 2.0 GPA in the prerequisites or entry-level courses.

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I am still trying to figure out the answer to your initial query. Whose goal is it to have more humanities majors, other than faculty teaching those courses?
Last time I checked, the symphony had a lot of applicants. So did the ballet, opera, theater, art museums. Apparently they have sufficient qualified personnel for their needs. I do not see the federal, state, or local governments, universities or companies desperate to hire more humanities grads ( maybe you think they should be, but that is a separate topic). At least right now there appear to be sufficient humanities grads for society to function as it does. Is greater demand anticipated by some and if so why and where?

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Perhaps it is just a desire to have a more well-read population? A good goal, but it should be addressed in high school. Along with greater understanding of statistics, public health, civics, voting rights…

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The majors list in that article is not all humanities -

"Marymount provided numbers breaking down how many students are majoring in the fields headed to the chopping block.

  • B.A. Art (10)
  • B.A. Economics (13)
  • B.A. English (15)
  • B.A. History (15)
  • B.S. Mathematics (6)
  • B.A. Philosophy (3)
  • B.A. Secondary Education (0, though this was not a primary major)
  • B.A. Sociology (8)
  • B.A. Theology & Religious Studies (0)
  • M.A. English & Humanities (4)"

Math is the M in STEM and Economics is considered a social science. My daughter, who was a math/econ joint major (not at this college), considers Econ a STEM subject when she looks at resumes. Econ can be heavy on statistics and often gets you a BS degree (although not in this list).

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