As do I. I hope we don’t lose it.
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I wouldn’t make that assumption. Humanities majors for the most part do find employment soon after college, as do kids at Missouri State. The issue isn’t that they can’t find any job at all. It’s more that the jobs may be ones that don’t typically require a college degree and may not well relate to major or career goals.
For example, Missouri State says 90% of grads are employed or in grad school after 6 months. However, the stats at https://business.missouristate.edu/student-success-statistics.htm mention 94% of Missouri State business grads either found employment or grad school, at a 6 months out survey during 2020, with COVID challenges. I’d expect even higher than 94% for business school grads without COVID. Missouri State business school grads also average substantially higher salaries and rates of having jobs that typically require a college degree.
With a 94% admit rate in 2021, Missouri State does not have competitive admissions, yet a large portion of students choose majors that are not known for being especially employable with only a bachelors, far less than other alternatives, such as the business school majors listed above.
The most common majors at Missouri State as listed in IPEDS/CDS and corresponding earnings as listed on College Scorecard (sample is mostly Pell and FA recipients) are below. Psychology was the most common major, yet it’s not one I’d expect students to choose if strictly going by the criteria listed earlier (“landing a job period, and then hoping it pays, and then hoping they like it”). CS was only the ~20th most common major, less popular than a major in “Liberal Arts”, even though I’d expect most students to consider CS a highly employable degree.
1 . Psychology – $32k
2. Elementary/Early Childhood Education – $31k
– Gap –
3. Management – $47k
4. Biology – $31k (if all biological group are combined to single major)
– Gap –
5. Finance – $55k
…
~20th – Computer Science
I’d expect a lot of other criteria beyond employment is involved in major choice . For example, with a 38% 4-year grad rate and 58% 6-year grad rate improving chance of graduation/timely graduation may be important. Personal interest and enjoyment also is certainly important. While elementary education tends to be an employable degree, I doubt that a large portion go in to elementary education who do not expect to like teaching young children. With a ~$30k listed tax reported earnings, it doesn’t appear that they are choosing the field because it is lucrative.
In contrast, kids at Princeton and other Ivy+ type college do tend to emphasize fields associated with larger earnings including things like finance, consulting, tech, and medical school, far more so than the college population as a whole. At Princeton the IPEDS/CDS major distribution was a follows. CS was by far the most common major at Princeton, but only ~20th at Missouri State.
1 . Computer Science
– Gap –
2. Biology (if all biological group are combined to single major)
3. Economics
4. Public Policy
– Big Gap –
5. History
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CS is often perceived as a “hard” major, so it may be that relatively few students at less selective colleges try it because they feel that it is “too hard” (similar for engineering majors).
Indeed, the popular observation and perception of CS being an overloaded major that is more difficult to get into than the college generally is mostly found at more selective colleges, particularly the more selective state flagship level universities that do not have hedge fund money to expand their CS departments to handle the student demand from their large overall enrollments. Less selective colleges are much less likely to have overloaded CS majors or higher admission selectivity for CS than other majors. For example, 14 of the 22 CSUs that offer CS majors do not list their CS majors as impacted (i.e. with higher student demand than their CS departments can handle, which requires more selective admission for the major).
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There is a notable correlation between selectivity and CS %, particularly at the highly selective end. The more selective, the further the CS % tends to be from the national average. It’s normal for the most selective colleges to have several times higher CS % than the national average, making CS among the top one or two most popular majors. This does not occur for engineering majors to the same extent, including when limited to only colleges where engineering majors are offered. For example, Harvard has more than double the % CS as UMass, but UMass has more than double the % Engineering as Harvard.
The CS selectivity correlation is loose, with many exceptions. For example, Georgetown and Emory are highly selective with a high concentration of excellent students, yet only 2% major in CS… well below both Missouri State and the national average. In contrast, there are colleges like Dakota State that have non-selective admissions, yet still have a CS (+ related) rate on par with Princeton.
I suspect the most influential factor is self-selection prior to attending college. Students who are interested in CS and generally more focused on fields that are associated with higher incomes are more likely to apply to Princeton. Missouri residents who are interested in CS, engineering, or to a lesser extent STEM are more likely to apply to MIssouri Tech. Missouri residents who are not interested in tech are more likely to apply to U Missouri or Missouri State.
While attending college, there is also a 2nd selection effect which can include switching between majors due to bad grades, objective computations being “hard”, not fitting in or having mentors, not enjoying the subject material, for a variety of reasons favoring a different career path, pressure from friends/family, etc.
Similar types of statements could be said about humanities or major selection in general, although I expect % humanities would be more correlated with things like being a LAC than with general selectivity.
This is a related article on why English departments seem content to fade into oblivion as the home of remedial writing courses:
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Interesting. There are some good points raised but it eventually wanders into hackneyed criticisms of academia that could be levied against many other areas of study, including philosophy. And if you read far enough, it also reveals a fairly transparent partisan political bias.
And frankly, I don’t blame any English professor for not wanting to play the role of remedial teacher. Secondary education needs to do better. Would the Economics faculty enthusiastically embrace a role of teaching basic math and how to construct and read graphs?
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Math departments often have to teach lower level math, more so at less selective colleges and open admission community colleges. At some of these same colleges, chemistry and physics departments may offer high school level chemistry and physics courses as preparation for the usual college level courses that assume high school chemistry or physics as prerequisites. So it is not like English departments are unique in having to teach remedial courses.
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Aren’t biases, or at least the perception of biases, inherent in the humanities? Since biases are relative and no one is absolutely neutral, there’re always perceptions of biases, in one direction or the other, in subject matters that have a great deal of subjectivities. Do the subjectivities or biases contribute to the decline of the humanities majors, as the author suggested? I’d think so because they’ve always had an effect on a not-insignificant portion of students. In the highly polarized current environment, it is unsurprising that those perceived biases become more pronounced, turning more students away from the humanities.
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I was thinking the same thing. Math departments have to offer lots of required intro classes for many majors and to bring students up to speed with HS level classes also. Yes, there are not many math majors (but probably never have been), but most math departments are still thriving (unlike English departments).
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Math departments teach remedial math, but it’s also the case that various upper divisional math courses are required by other majors outside math, and are required by the joint teaching/math degree, and all three are huge benefits to the sustainability of math as a major. English teaches remedial composition and writing, and is also benefitted by the dual teaching/English degree, but there are no upper divisional English courses required by other majors. That’s the big difference between the two fields.
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Maybe that is part of the problem. My daughter did have to take something branded as advanced writing for her STEM degree (everybody in every major did). Maybe English departments need to partner with other disciplines and offer higher level English classes that are required for other majors. I could imagine higher level writing/reading classes for engineering or business majors. It would add value to the other degree and maybe more people would know how to read and write.
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Seems like those would be courses offered by the Communications department which might be separate from English (but that might depend on the size of the school in question).
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Given student loan debt that can travel with someone for decades, it should be mostly about money. Going to a college, particularly an expensive one but they’re mostly all pretty expensive, and majoring in something that won’t let you start paying down those loans, is madness.
I’ve had various jobs, and I’ve been somewhat happy and somewhat unhappy in all of them. The highest paid ones were actually the nicest, and they both depended on my technical degrees. Money is very very important in buying happiness, especially as long as you have nondischargeable debt.
Now if a good way to get a high paying job is to major in philosophy, then do it once you’re sure. Or is that just a small-numbers artifact in the data?
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A great deal can be gained by knowing classical English grammar. English teachers at high school seem to have a religious aversion to teaching it, yet it is tested on the SAT verbal, and it continues to be important.
It can be learned by doing the sample SAT sections on the CB website, reviewing errors, and saying “hey I don’t know what grammar rule they’re talking about! I’d better figure that out!”
If I am reading a memo and the writer pretentiously puts “whom” for a direct object, I may spend a moment thinking about whether there’s a valid excuse (the sentence might have been edited from a form where it was an indirect object, and that just got missed) before getting a rather bad impression of the person’s education.
People can take more and more English, and the teachers will be careful NOT to teach these things that matter in the real world. Maybe it’s supposed to be learned at home. But it’s more important than doing whatever the English department’s fad is.
I disagree. The criticisms are right on, and they are specific enough that they do not look like issues in most other departments.
Refusal to teach basic rules of composition like grammar, in cahoots with high school teachers who also don’t teach those things, flies in the face of the real world’s valuing of that skill. These are employees paid to teach, as well as research. If they won’t do what their customers want, eventually the customers will leave. Give the kids credit for knowing what the English department is up to and entrusting their training elsewhere.
They could have been the core of the liberal arts university. Instead they may kill that university, but the rest of us will find new ways. It’s one of those sad things in life that mature people will accept and not mourn too much over.
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I disagree with your disagreement of my April post. Two points, and my attention span on this topic will have been permanently exhausted:
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On the point of grammar, my position is that I don’t blame collegiate faculty for not wanting to teach those remedial skills, and I stand by that position. That should be handled in high school, leaving the precious and costly hours spent in any college worth a damn for focus on higher level work, inquiry and analysis. Sorry, that’s my view.
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I disagree that the criticisms are specific, with perhaps the exception of the practice of challenging canon, and frankly I don’t see an issue with challenging and deconstructing canon. The rest of these specific points could easily apply to any of the disciplines in the liberal arts. I also question the accuracy of the generalization that English faculty have given up on the requirement for college-level writing. It’s big swing but, IMHO, hardly a valid generalization. On the other hand, pearls like “disdain for the practical” and “love of theory”? Are you serious? That’s unique to the English department? Lolz. I don’t think so.
@cquin85 I believe you mean canon, not Cannon. Spellcheck correction?
No, just stupidity. 
Maybe it’s a disdain for the politics of the English department which drives some of the students away. Likewise it drives students away from other liberal arts fields, but English is harder. There’s nothing in sociology like the reading list given in the article. And what is the validity of what’s learned there?
Faculty can challenge the canon in their research and even in their teaching, but they should give it the respect of teaching it, preferably before deconstructing it. It’s what the customers want, it was a part of a very successful civilization at the physical location of that university and where may students’ families came from. Add other canons too. Make the program more rigorous, require some foreign languages in the early years and teach other traditions from native language.
But don’t just skip the canon and teach only your so-far worthless alternatives, tied to cultural turmoil rather than success.
Other disciplines in the liberal arts (excluding science and math) are also undergoing a crisis. English would probably be more employable than most of them, for those who finish. But it’s too hard for many of the students, and no longer worth the trouble for many of the rest.
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I think we’re mostly in agreement. I don’t really disagree with anything you just wrote.