The Decline/Rethinking of The Humanities Major

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386

One area that has not had much discussion is at what step in the pipeline the decline is occurring. Comparing surveys of 2015 HS college bound seniors who had decided on a prospective major to 2019 bachelor’s degree recipients suggests the students the portion of students pursuing humanities generally increases during college. One outlier is visual/performance arts, which has a large decrease in interest during college and generally shows different patterns than other humanities fields.

Intended Major of 2015 HS Seniors → 2019 (pre-COVID) Bachelor’s Degree Recipients

  • English: 1.3% → 1.9%
  • History: 1.0% → 1.1%
  • Liberal Arts : 0.8% → 2.1%
  • Foreign Language: 0.6% → 0.8%
  • Philosophy: 0.2% → 0.6%
  • Area Studies: 0.1% → 0.4%
  • Total of Above: 4.0% → 6.9%
  • Visual/Performance Arts: 7.5% → 4.5%

A similar effect occurs at highly selective colleges. For example, looking at Harvard’s student surveys in the years above.

  • 2015 Harvard Freshman Survey – 12% Humanities School
  • 2019 Harvard Senior Survey – 16% Humanities School

Parts of this increased humanities interest during college may be lack of exposure to majors like liberal arts, philosophy, or area studies during HS; which all more than doubled % between HS and college. Part of it may be due to a portion of students struggling in more calculation-intensive majors switching to humanities. In any case, it appears that few HS students intend to major in non visual/performance art humanities.

Looking back further gives some clues about when this decline in HS interest occurred. I’ll focus on just English major for simplicity. It looks like the decline in HS students intending to major in English began between 2007 and 2009 and has gradually continued since then.

2001 – 1.3% English (HS)
2003 – 1.5% English (HS)
2005 – 1.8% English (HS)
2007 – 1.8% English (HS)
2009 – 1.6% English (HS)
2011 – 1.5% English (HS)
2013 – 1.4% English (HS)
2015 – 1.3% English (HS)

One contributing factor may be the recession following the 2007-08 financial crisis. The decline in English major interest began at just as the recession became severe. Unemployment peaked at more than 10% during this recession and remained elevated for many years. When jobs are perceived to be scarce students may favor fields with perceived more reliable employment.

The recession and lack of employment opportunities also contributed to things like Obama’s 2009 Education to Innovate program, with stated goals “to increase STEM literacy, enhance teaching quality, and expand educational and career opportunities for America’s youth.” The program included over $1 billon funding for STEM education. During this period I expect students had increasing pressure from both teachers, parents, friends, and the general community to favor STEM fields over fields like English.

While the recession eventually ended, the increased community pressure to favor fields like STEM over English did not end. If anything it’s become stronger over time. Recent events may or may not change this trend. With the numerous news stories about tech lay offs and most recently SVB failing, students may not perceive tech to be as financially secure a field as in previous years.

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387

The iphone first came to market in 2007.

388

While I don’t doubt that the book choices in common core English are less interesting than in the past, I doubt that is a primary factor in the decline since the decline in humanities does not seem to be specific to English. We see a similar pattern of decline in history, foreign language, philosophy, etc.

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389

Perhaps much of that can be explained by people initially majoring in a STEM field, they find it too difficult and/or uninteresting, and they move into a humanities major.

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I mentioned that factor in the post you quoted, as well aa students having little HS familiarity with the majors that had largest increases from HS to college, such as philosophy and area studies. There are also many other possible contributing factors, such as women being more likely to complete college than males and being more likely to favor humanities majors. Or tech majors having competitive entrance requirements.

Looking at which majors outside of humanities had the largest changes between intended major in HS and actual bachelor’s degree received during college may give some clues about which of the many possible factors is most influential. A summary is below.

It’s not just humanities majors that had a large increase and calculation-intensive majors that had a large decrease. Instead there are a wide variety of major types in both groups, suggesting a variety of contributing factors. The 3 majors with the largest increases are ones most students may not be familiar with in HS. For example, most HS students probably weren’t aware that majoring in leisure/fitness/kinesiology/recreation/… was an option. Having a reputation as an easier major likely also contributes, but the majors with largest increase are not all ones that have a reputation for being easy. For example math/stats and CS are calculation-intensive majors that do not have a reputation for being easy, yet both have a notable increase. Perhaps this relates to students more likely to be focused on future employment prospects during college and/or community pushing them in that direction.

Similarly the majors with the largest decrease during college also include a wide variety of types, suggesting a wide variety of contributing factors. The top 2 (legal studies and military tech) might seem like a good idea to HS students, but seem less practical or desirable to obtain later on. The decreases in engineering and architecture likely involve both being challenging fields and both often having competitive entrance. Visual/performance arts may require a higher relative performance to peers in order to be successful, resulting in a larger portion choosing to drop out. I’d make a similar comment for biology (usually pre-med) , which had a much larger decrease than other sciences.

By far the 2 most popular major fields for both HS students and college students were nursing/health and business. They are not listed because both fields had little change in portion of students between HS and college.

Majors with Largest Portion Increase During College (only majors with >0.5% included)

  1. Leisure/Fitness – 0.9% → 2.6%
  2. Liberal Arts – 0.8% → 2.1%
  3. Communication – 2.6% → 4.5%
  4. English – 1.3% → 1.9%
  5. Math/Stats – 0.9% → 1.3%
  6. Foreign Language – 0.6% → 0.8%
  7. Computer Science – 3.8% → 4.8%
  8. Psychology – 5.0% → 5.9%

Majors with Largest Portion Decrease During College (only majors with >0.5% included)

  1. Legal Studies – 2.4% → 0.2%
  2. Military Tech – 0.6% → 0.1%
  3. Architecture – 1.6% → 0.4%
  4. Engineering – 12% → 6.3%
  5. Visual/Performing Arts – 7.5% → 4.5%
  6. Engineering Tech – 1.6% → 1.0%
  7. Security / Law Enforcement – 3.7% → 2.9%
  8. Biology – 7.7% → 6.2%
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391

Interesting, since nursing programs commonly have either highly competitive secondary admission to major, highly competitive frosh direct admission, and/or aggressive weed-out criteria to stay in the major. That would suggest that many high school senior nursing aspirants cannot get into or get weeded out of nursing.

But if nursing and other health professions are aggregated, perhaps nursing rejects end up in other health professions?

392

Reading this thread with interest as my kiddo plans to major in philosophy. I’m assessing outcomes at his various options.

This, emblazoned on the admissions outcomes page at Pitt, right below “The Educational Value of a Lifetime,” is just depressing. Maybe some humanities majors could’ve helped in this office.

Am I nitpicking? I don’t think so. But even if I am, it’s a necessary trait for all, humanities or not.

pitt outcomes
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393

Apparently no one was available to veristy the spelling…

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I wonder if the drop in some majors is due to students being exposed to the relevant professions during internships and deciding that is not how they want to spend their lives. For example, architecture is a demanding major that requires a difficult professional exam. My guess is that some students enter the field thinking they will be designing skyscrapers and are disappointed to learn that a good many architects spend their lives laying out cubicles (or at least they used to before the COVID lockdowns) or designing home additions.

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395

It could very well be that the decrease in humanities majors is a good thing. There was never a large number of men majoring in humanities. The field was heavily female, and often led to careers in secondary school teaching. If some women students now have decided they want different career options or their academic interests more closely align with their male classmates, why is that not a good thing?

Perhaps women feel more accepted in traditionally male fields and are free to pursue those interests more freely than before. Perhaps they are more concerned with financial independence than in prior generations. Maybe teaching no longer has the appeal it once did. In any event, the decline is not necessarily all bad.

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I was a history major (and French too - doubling down on my “useless” degrees) and never planned on teaching - nor did most of my fellow majors (which in history were a majority male). I had a pretty high powered career in financial services (did not get a MBA) and now I own my own (totally unrelated) business. Very few of my classmates in the humanities went on to teach back then. To contextualize, I attended a SLAC so that probably skews my experience.

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Do you think a history and french major from a SLAC these days could have a similar path as you have had? On average. Not some outlier. Not a rhetorical question. I am curious. Also from a flagship public?

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Yes, I think being from a SLAC does skew the likely outcome-both back then and still today. I fully realize humanities majors can end up in any career. But it is likely far more ended up as teachers than bankers from the less prestigious colleges. SLACs are a tiny subset of the thousands of colleges. The outcome from a public non flagship is often different, and more people attend those.

History and philosophy had better male representation than English, languages, religion or the arts.

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I’m not sure. My sense is that most humanities majors at the SLAC I attended do not go into teaching - lots go on to graduate school, law school, med school etc. Others go into various careers that aren’t necessarily direct offshoots of their major. I didn’t consider myself an outlier at the time since none of my friends (most humanities majors of some kind) went into teaching - nor were they underemployed. Honestly, my original plan was law school and then I considered the foreign service, but at the end of the day none of those appealed.

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Was the SLAC a highly selective one that is a Wall Street etc. recruiting target, or a lesser known less selective one?

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A top 20 LAC (but not top 10). Today it has an acceptance rate of less than 10%. It wasn’t a Wall Street recruiting target back in the day and I don’t think it is now - although some students end up there.

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Given the tiny population of top LACs, their outcomes are hardly predictive of the larger student population. For the more typical student, at say, Missouri State or ASU, which enroll far more students, those outcomes are normative.

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I’ll add this. You can have a very successful career as a humanities major but you will need to be more creative and flexible about job opportunities than students STEM majors. Of course, a fair number will head to law or medical school but if that isn’t your plan you will need to be open to a lot of directions to be successful in establishing yourself.

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Correction, a fair number at top schools will head to law/med school. Not the case at ASU.

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That is probably true. At the same time, this site doesn’t really cater to students who are going to Missouri State (no knock on them - just don’t see them as a focus here). We can’t on the one hand be focused on the best colleges and majors to get into MBB/IB and then pivot to making colleges like Missouri State the default example for humanities majors. My attitude about the humanities is in the minority on CC and I’m sure it is informed by my personal experiences. Because my kids have the luxury of a fully funded college education, they are free to major in whatever interests them. I fully understand that this is extreme privilege and don’t fault parents who are concerned with the bottom line - if my kids had to borrow for college or came from a less comfortable background, I’d probably be concerned too.

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