The Decline/Rethinking of The Humanities Major

[roycroftmom]

I think there is a tendency for people to extrapolate their personal experience as the norm. It is natural, but it is important to remember that most of us on this site do not meet the norm in education or income, nor do our experiences necessarily reflect upon the greater population. Fewer English majors at Williams may cause us concern, but maybe kids are right not to major in English at Missouri State if they do not want to end up teaching.

The statistics so often used about the decline in humanities are national-so yes, the default should be the Mizz State and ASU and Texas A&M where the vast majority of students attend, with likely different outcomes than the SLACs.

[Data10]

@roycroftmom

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.

The percentage of humanities majors that are women isn’t decreasing. The number of humanities majors that are women has indeed decreased over the past decade, but not as fast a decrease as the number of humanities majors that are men. Some example numbers are below.

Percent Female: 2007 → 2019
Nursing; 89% → 87%
Education: 79% → 82%
Psychology: 77% → 79%
Area Studies: 69% → 73%
Art: 68% → 72%
English: 68% → 72%
All Majors: 57% → 58%
History: 41% → 41%
Philosophy: 30% → 37%
Computer Science: 16% → 20%
Electrical Engineering: 12% ->16%
Mechanical Engineering: 12% ->16%

Most humanities majors do not intend to go into teaching. Some surveys have found the a large portion are underemployed soon after college, which is defined as working in jobs that usually do not require a college degree. The specific employment fields and titles are often highly varied, much more so than typical vocationally focused majors. Some specific numbers are below, copied from a previous post:

Unemployment and Underemployment Rates by Major: Age 22-27, ACS Survey (Feb 2023)
Philosophy – 57% underemployed, 9% unemployed
Liberal Arts – 55% underemployed, 6% unemployed
Foreign Langue – 50% underemployed, 8% unemployed
English – 49% underemployed, 6% unemployed,
History – 49% underemployed, 6% unemployed,

[roycroftmom]

Yes, women still dominate hum majors. But as you note, there are fewer women ( and men) hum majors than before; those increases in women majoring in computer science and engineering might have been hum
Majors a generation ago. The underemployment numbers are interesting-I wonder how many of those actually employed are teaching? Presumably that is not underemployment as a college degree is required.
That chart alone is enough to scare students.

[shawbridge]

Very helpful data. Thanks @Data10.

[Data10]

@roycroftmom

Yes, women still dominate hum majors. But as you note, there are fewer women ( and men) hum majors than before; those increases in women majoring in computer science and engineering might have been hum
Majors a generation ago.

A generation ago, women were far more common in CS. At one time as high as 37% of CS majors were women, which decreased down to 16% in more recent years, as noted above. % of women in CS has been starting to increase again, but is nowhere near previous levels. I think the increase in more recent years has more to do with society encouraging (or at least not active discouraging like in the past) women to enter CS to a greater degree than in the past. CS is less likely to be considered a boys club than in the past (see example in old commercial at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNjx_VWJ8U ).

While some would be humanities majors may choose CS/engineering, I’d expect this is more the exception than the rule. Instead I’d expect it would to be more common to for a would be humanities major to instead choose a more related major. For example, among UCLA students who were admitted as English majors, the most common non-humanities majors they switched to were sociology, communication, and political science… majors that focus more on writing and less on mathematical calculation. In contrast, students who were admitted as math majors, sometimes switched to econ, but never humanities – choosing majors that focus more on mathematical calculation and less on writing.

[Buckythedog]

I think the 2 most important things most (not all) kids think of when choosing a major are 1) can I get a job? and 2) can I make a lot of money? Both my boys are/were math majors, and some of their friends, and parent of friends were so mystified, what is he going to do with a math major? Imagine what they’d say if they majored in art history? A disturbing number of people can’t comprehend what one would do with a major that doesn’t sound like a job description.

[simba9]

@Buckythedog

I think the 2 most important things most (not all) kids think of when choosing a major are 1) can I get a job? and 2) can I make a lot of money?

I would say 1) Can I get a job? and 2) would it be an interesting career? Can I make a lot of money? would come after those, and my guess it mostly applies to students who go into pre-professional majors.

[neela1]

Clearly there is no “morally superior” order. The order varies by person.

[simba9]

Yes, it varies by person, but if you tally the motivations for most students up, I’d say overall their number one concern when it comes to a major is, “Can I get a job?”

[neela1]

I have been privy to the thinking of a bunch of my son’s friends. I must say that can I get a job is never a consideration. It is subsumed by “how much money can I make”. This consideration in fact supersedes the “can I get a job” question.

The question has boiled down to “is the job interesting”, “how much money can I make”, “how much work is the job”. There is no ranked order for these three considerations. They are all important, and decisions are made holistically. There is also a location preference which impinges on the choice separately.

[simba9]

I’d imagine a lot of us were privy to what our kids and their friends were looking for when they were deciding college majors. I will admit that my kids graduated 15-20 years ago, but when I think back on what majors my kids and their friends were deciding on, many, if not most of them, didn’t choose majors that led to lucrative careers.

[Data10]

This forum is in no way representative of the college population as a whole. Members of this forum often emphasize more lucrative career fields, far more than the college population as a whole. The major distribution is very different, as are the criteria students emphasize when choosing majors.

Some students do emphasize high earnings. Others emphasize choosing a major that they find interesting and enjoy. Some emphasize choosing a fields that they are comparatively good at or have a unique connection… sometimes with a particular mentor, role model, or family member. Some emphasize majors that they expect will make their parents happy. Some favor career fields and majors that they are passionate about, hoping to improve something about the world. Some choose a major that the believe will best facilitate a longer term plan such as getting in to med school, becoming an actor, etc. I could continue. It’s not a simple one size fits all rule. Different students focus on different things.

When I applied to colleges, I applied as a prospective electrical engineering major. Ever since I was a small child in elementary school, I have always favored objective math/science type fields to subjecting english/social science type fields and had much more natural talent in the former. I found EE especially appealing in spite of not having taken any engineering classes during HS because of my interest in electronics, particularly building electronics. I enjoyed taking things apart and seeing how they work, often rebuilding them in unique ways, expanding them in to more complex systems than the original, with new functionality.

I didn’t actually take an intro to EE class until my sophomore year of college. I really enjoyed the class and got feedback that I was good at the field, by receiving by second ever A+ final grade. The A+ related to finding additional solutions on the final that the professor hadn’t considered. I received positive feedback and encouragement from both the professor and TAs (one in particular). If I had a negative experience in intro to EE, I think there is a good chance I would have majored in something else, perhaps CS or statistics. I had an even more positive experience in intro to CS than I did in intro to EE. However, I felt at a disadvantage in CS due to not owning a computer, and needing to travel to shared computing resource locations to do assignments. My interest in CS was also not as uniform as EE. For example, I liked building interesting systems via coding. I did not like various other aspects of CS, like compiling.

When choosing the EE major, I had a general impression that engineers often had quality employment, but didn’t actually look up employment or salary stats until I was ready to look for a job in senior year. That wasn’t the focus for me. If I was choosing a major during a tech downfall event like dot com crash of 2000, I think I still would have made the same decisions. However, if I believed that quality employment was unlikely, I think there is a good chance I would have chosen an alternative interest.

While in college, I heard a wide variety of other reasons for why students chose particular majors or career paths. Most students I knew fell in to majors and careers that fit reasonably well with what I knew about their personality and/or interests. Almost none of these were humanities majors, but they also weren’t all majors associated with higher earnings.

[kiddie]

I agree with what you are saying. My daughter chose her major, after entering college undeclared, by which classes she liked and what work she could see herself doing and enjoying. She ended up with math/econ. She started in supply chain and is now doing analytics for a medical non-profit. Her work is more tech than she had envisioned. She lives in a very expensive place and every so often she wonders if she should have majored in tech where she could make more money. Lots of her friends have CS and Engineering degrees and make tons. However, her company is filled with caring people and she is often moved by their success stories. I think she gets joy from being in such a wonderful environment compared to “big pharma” (where many who leave her company go to.)

[cquin85]

I may be confusing you with someone else, but I think your son attends/attended Princeton, right? It would make sense for that crowd to not have too much concern about landing a job and be more focused on landing the most remunerative and interesting job. A kid at Missouri State (since that seems to be the running example of the not-Princeton) is probably a bit more focused on landing a job period, and then hoping it pays, and then hoping they like it.

[neela1]

I think in either place, Princeton or Missouri State, the major is a bigger determinant of whether you will land a job or not than the place itself. I would guess “easier to land a job” majors from Missouri State will land a job easier than “harder to land” majors from Princeton.

[cquin85]

What I meant is that, on average, the Princeton student is going to more confidently assume employment as a base line. But, sure, you’re probably right that Princeton kids are more frequently seeking positions that are very difficult to attain.

[neela1]

I think who assumes what really varies. I think low SES kids coming into Princeton are less informed about choices and risks. To the extent the system doesn’t proactively socialize them (and to some extent it is not really fashionable), they may have difficulties with jobs. They may also not be confident of a job as a baseline. If the kid comes from a high SES family, even at Princeton, there is a wealth of family and community knowledge that the kid would have imbibed growing up as to how navigate the process. So such kids would think that a job is a baseline. This is sad that the low SES kid doesn’t fully partake in the full range of choices that a good university has on offer. But this is reality.

We visited Yale a few years ago for a campus visit, and our tour guide seemed to be bright and engaging, seemingly from poor means, and doing a major that I had a difficult time understanding how it could be put to use. I distinctly remember telling my wife that this kid is poorly counseled. I really felt for her.

[NJSue]

The “liberal arts” are subjects that a free person should study in order to expand and train a free mind. There are no more free people anymore except the extremely wealthy, and we all have to work and serve the marketplace, so humanities are going down the drain. I teach English at a mid-level comprehensive university and will retire (I hope) in 7 years. My faculty tenure line (teaching Shakespeare and pre-modern British literature; “Homer to Hamlet”-type surveys) will not be filled. I know this. However, I also know that many of my students hunger for intellectual and artistic food. I continue to be pleasantly surprised and gratified by the accounting and nursing majors in my class who enjoy and respond intelligently to Homer, to Shakespeare, to Austen. It gets me up in the morning.

[cquin85]

@NJSue

I continue to be pleasantly surprised and gratified by the accounting and nursing majors in my class who enjoy and respond intelligently to Homer, to Shakespeare, to Austen. It gets me up in the morning.

Maybe that’s where we’re headed - the technical studies major who takes some Shakespeare and some Latin and calls it a day, and no more majors. There are a few points of view in the thread that suggest that as a good outcome.

[NJSue]

The humanities have always been, to a certain extent, “amateur” endeavors in that they were studied for love and not profit. I also understand that the ability to pursue a humanities degree is a sign of privilege, especially as the cost of college has become increasingly out of reach for the average person without incurring debt slavery. I have mixed feelings about my own complicity in this system. On the other hand, I strongly believe in the value of what I teach. I “carry the fire” (Cormac McCarthy). I can’t even articulate this professionally because the idea of the canon (Matthew Arnold’s “best that has been thought and said”) has been discredited as racist, sexist, and classist. And yes, I can see the validity of that critique. But I strongly believe in the value of what I teach and I will continue to pass it on until I leave academe.