Are the Humanities Doomed?

[Hibush]

There's a feedback loop with the earnings as well. If college students believe that majoring in the humanities is going to mean they can't get higher paying jobs, than those who value that highly will major in other things. The students left in the humanities are going to be those who have other priorities, and when they graduate many of them will become teachers, go into the non profit sector or do other things that aren't likely to pay terribly well. That doesn't mean that a student who majors in business instead of philosophy is actually going to earn more money because of their degree.

You'd have to do an experiment where you randomly assigned students to majors, but then that would not be predictive of the real world.

To what extent is the feedback from faculty as well. In business (at least in my college) the faculty emphasize the value that you want to maximize economic returns, including personal income. So they attract the students with that mindset and reinforce it. The graduates have high incomes, but I wonder about their fulfillment and value to society.

In my field, we realize that stuff costs money, so you are going to need enough of it. But that is usually the means to the end that you are trying to reach.

In some fields, this business of thinking of money is considered distasteful. If faculty emphasize the value that one should focus on the scholarship alone despite the inability to monetize it (they don't use that word obvs), then they will attract students who are detached from personal finance and like it that way. That attitude is only manageable if one has a reliable and sufficient income from somewhere. But that is not characteristic of the students. How would one counter that feedback loop?

[marshwiggle]

The same old theme in WaPo today. "The most-regretted (and lowest-paying) college majors. Almost half of humanities and arts majors regret their choice — and enrollment in those disciplines is shrinking rapidly".

The story itself isn't all doom and gloom, but points in directions where there is growth and satisfied graduates.

On the upside, in the old vocational vs liberal-arts dimension, "A substantial majority of vocational and technical students (60 percent) wish they'd gone for more schooling".

One graph shows that humanities bachelor degrees have dropped from 9% in the 1980s to 7% today. that  is  a drop but hardly the cliff it is described as. Comater that to the burgeoning Computer Science which is up from 5% to 6 1/2%. That's right, the major that is blowing everything else out of the water has almost caught up with the humanities. (The last 10 years look worse, and there is a graph of that as well.)

The big difference is what the requirements are for those majors. Usually computer science (like most STEM things) has a lot of math requirements that all kinds of students don't have from high school, so even if they wanted to do computer science, they couldn't. On the other hand, many humanities majors don't require much beyond high school English, which everyone has, so virtually everyone is eligible.

You have to determine what proportion of high school graduates who possess the admission requirements for each program actually major in it to determine "popularity" of each program.

[marshwiggle]

The same old theme in WaPo today. "The most-regretted (and lowest-paying) college majors. Almost half of humanities and arts majors regret their choice — and enrollment in those disciplines is shrinking rapidly".

The story itself isn't all doom and gloom, but points in directions where there is growth and satisfied graduates.

On the upside, in the old vocational vs liberal-arts dimension, "A substantial majority of vocational and technical students (60 percent) wish they'd gone for more schooling".

There's a feedback loop with the earnings as well. If college students believe that majoring in the humanities is going to mean they can't get higher paying jobs, than those who value that highly will major in other things. The students left in the humanities are going to be those who have other priorities, and when they graduate many of them will become teachers, go into the non profit sector or do other things that aren't likely to pay terribly well. That doesn't mean that a student who majors in business instead of philosophy is actually going to earn more money because of their degree.

But the students who didn't prioritize high income won't have any reason to regret their choice unless their earnings are below what they expected. If they didn't expect to get rich, but wound up with what they thought was reasonable, then they wouldn't be unhappy. However, if they wound up struggling to make ends meet, they would be disillusioned, and probably feel they'd been misled.

[Mobius]

Grad students and prospective grad students show up in my Twitter feed because they somehow go viral with a question or hot take. It pains me to find out some of them aren't funded or going an online route for a European Ph.D. These folks also tend to think they would be competitive on the job market; no thanks to "supportive" academics who cheer them on.

[Wahoo Redux]

The same old theme in WaPo today. "The most-regretted (and lowest-paying) college majors. Almost half of humanities and arts majors regret their choice — and enrollment in those disciplines is shrinking rapidly".

The story itself isn't all doom and gloom, but points in directions where there is growth and satisfied graduates.

On the upside, in the old vocational vs liberal-arts dimension, "A substantial majority of vocational and technical students (60 percent) wish they'd gone for more schooling".

One graph shows that humanities bachelor degrees have dropped from 9% in the 1980s to 7% today. that  is  a drop but hardly the cliff it is described as. Comater that to the burgeoning Computer Science which is up from 5% to 6 1/2%. That's right, the major that is blowing everything else out of the water has almost caught up with the humanities. (The last 10 years look worse, and there is a graph of that as well.)

I only skimmed the article and did a search/find on this material in the actual report.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2021-report-economic-well-being-us-households-202205.pdf

The commentary and graph with the information the article uses is found, I believe, on pages 75 and 76 of the report.

A quarter of the participants regret their engineering degrees----which I cannot see, knowing as many engineers as I have and knowing how much these people make----and then I notice that among everyone else between 32% and 48% wish they had studies something different. 

Geeze.  Roughly a third to a half of all fields have unhappy people (if this info is an accurate picture).

But I also notice this qualifier among the participants: "Among adults who completed at least some college who are not currently enrolled."  So we have people who have dropped out without a degree?

[jimbogumbo]

Wahoo: I read the article a few days ago, and also looked where you did. All of that made me lose interest and faith in that article, so I didn't post a link to it. I would prefer to see data sets that are only for people who graduated in that major.

FWIW, we've had a slew of engineers who didn't like that career once they started, and went back for a teaching license. However, it wasn't clear to me this and not unhappy engineers made up the group that was surveyed.

[Wahoo Redux]

Wahoo: I read the article a few days ago, and also looked where you did. All of that made me lose interest and faith in that article, so I didn't post a link to it. I would prefer to see data sets that are only for people who graduated in that major.

FWIW, we've had a slew of engineers who didn't like that career once they started, and went back for a teaching license. However, it wasn't clear to me this and not unhappy engineers made up the group that was surveyed.

Got'cha. Thanks.

Having done a little journalism you are always looking for the "angle," something that makes people want to read it.  This seemed like that.

Glad to know I wasn't completely misunderstanding.

Gosh, half the people who fail at a thing which they had done something different.  Who knew?

[marshwiggle]

Wahoo: I read the article a few days ago, and also looked where you did. All of that made me lose interest and faith in that article, so I didn't post a link to it. I would prefer to see data sets that are only for people who graduated in that major.

FWIW, we've had a slew of engineers who didn't like that career once they started, and went back for a teaching license. However, it wasn't clear to me this and not unhappy engineers made up the group that was surveyed.

Got'cha. Thanks.

Having done a little journalism you are always looking for the "angle," something that makes people want to read it.  This seemed like that.

Glad to know I wasn't completely misunderstanding.

Gosh, half the people who fail at a thing which they had done something different.  Who knew?

Heck, in my experience, many if not most students are rethinking things around third year. For all kinds of programs, first year is getting everyone to the same level; second year is filling in background, and fourth year allows people to branch out into lots of areas, so lots of hard stuff is jammed into third year. That pressure makes it a lot less "fun" for most people. (By fourth year, having more choice usually brings the magic back.)

So yeah, people who dropped out will most likely have regrets.

[Caracal]

The same old theme in WaPo today. "The most-regretted (and lowest-paying) college majors. Almost half of humanities and arts majors regret their choice — and enrollment in those disciplines is shrinking rapidly".

The story itself isn't all doom and gloom, but points in directions where there is growth and satisfied graduates.

On the upside, in the old vocational vs liberal-arts dimension, "A substantial majority of vocational and technical students (60 percent) wish they'd gone for more schooling".

There's a feedback loop with the earnings as well. If college students believe that majoring in the humanities is going to mean they can't get higher paying jobs, than those who value that highly will major in other things. The students left in the humanities are going to be those who have other priorities, and when they graduate many of them will become teachers, go into the non profit sector or do other things that aren't likely to pay terribly well. That doesn't mean that a student who majors in business instead of philosophy is actually going to earn more money because of their degree.

But the students who didn't prioritize high income won't have any reason to regret their choice unless their earnings are below what they expected. If they didn't expect to get rich, but wound up with what they thought was reasonable, then they wouldn't be unhappy. However, if they wound up struggling to make ends meet, they would be disillusioned, and probably feel they'd been misled.

I just doubt that most people have a stable, strictly rational, calculation of their past choices, current situation and future prospects. If you know people who majored in computer science  working in tech who make a lot of money, it could be easy to think "I should have majored in computer science" without considering that you didn't major in computer science because you have no aptitude or particular interest in it. Or someone might have been unconcerned about money during undergrad and chosen to major in the humanities, but then wish they made more money a few years after graduating. Would they actually make more money if they had majored in business? Not necessarily. It's possible they are conflating their choice of major with the choices they have made after graduating.

[mamselle]

And the option to still do both remains.

I'm happy with my humanities education.

I also earned decently when working as an academic EA, using a lot of science-y stuff I either learned along the way, or on-the-job, as well.

I didn't need a science background to do most of the EA stuff, just had to pay attention to what was needed and what I was asked to do, and do it correctly.

Refrain: Your education need not be the only path to a well-paying job.

M.

[marshwiggle]

But the students who didn't prioritize high income won't have any reason to regret their choice unless their earnings are below what they expected. If they didn't expect to get rich, but wound up with what they thought was reasonable, then they wouldn't be unhappy. However, if they wound up struggling to make ends meet, they would be disillusioned, and probably feel they'd been misled.

I just doubt that most people have a stable, strictly rational, calculation of their past choices, current situation and future prospects. If you know people who majored in computer science  working in tech who make a lot of money, it could be easy to think "I should have majored in computer science" without considering that you didn't major in computer science because you have no aptitude or particular interest in it. Or someone might have been unconcerned about money during undergrad and chosen to major in the humanities, but then wish they made more money a few years after graduating.

Students may not think much about their future income explicitly, but they do likely have some idea of their future lifestyle expectations.  How they feel about their income will be a reflection of how close to (or far from) their expectations they are. Regret will reflect their inability to have the kind of lifestyle they imagined. The better programs do at giving students realistic post-graduation expectations, the less of their graduates will regret their choice.

[Caracal]

But the students who didn't prioritize high income won't have any reason to regret their choice unless their earnings are below what they expected. If they didn't expect to get rich, but wound up with what they thought was reasonable, then they wouldn't be unhappy. However, if they wound up struggling to make ends meet, they would be disillusioned, and probably feel they'd been misled.

I just doubt that most people have a stable, strictly rational, calculation of their past choices, current situation and future prospects. If you know people who majored in computer science  working in tech who make a lot of money, it could be easy to think "I should have majored in computer science" without considering that you didn't major in computer science because you have no aptitude or particular interest in it. Or someone might have been unconcerned about money during undergrad and chosen to major in the humanities, but then wish they made more money a few years after graduating.

Students may not think much about their future income explicitly, but they do likely have some idea of their future lifestyle expectations.  How they feel about their income will be a reflection of how close to (or far from) their expectations they are. Regret will reflect their inability to have the kind of lifestyle they imagined. The better programs do at giving students realistic post-graduation expectations, the less of their graduates will regret their choice.

What expectations would be realistic?  I don't really think average or median salary numbers are a particularly useful measure of what any particular humanities major should expect. What expectations are reasonable is going to depend on a particular person's career goals. It doesn't make much sense to lump in people who are going to be teachers with those who are going to be going into real estate investing.

[Wahoo Redux]

Refrain: Your education need not be the only path to a well-paying job.

M.

Now, now, mamselle, let's not start thinking of education as anything other than a job passport.  That opens up too many messy cans of worms.

Let's just continue to focus on "R.O.I." and other incompatible business jargons and remind ourselves constantly that humanities majors do not make as much money as we think they should.

[mamselle]

Don't they say, "Teach a person to fish...?"

So....

No fishing without worms...

;--}

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

Don't they say, "Teach a person to fish...?"

So....

No fishing without worms...

;--}

M.

Well put.