Are the Humanities Doomed?

[Wahoo Redux]

[. . .]

What I wanted to know, specifically, was, if a poor kid gets a humanities bachelor's degree are they unable to climb the professional ladder? 

Do we have numbers that illustrate how humanities degree holders are unable to overcome socioeconomic limitations?

Does a humanities degree confer no socioeconomic benefits to students from lower socioeconomic strata?

None of these questions are the topic of this thread. On average, people who obtain bachelor's degrees earn more than people with only high school diplomas.

Oh Spork.  I have been responding directly to this for several posts:

someone who is first-generation, from a rural area, is not very likely to be able to do so unless the degree is very career-focused. The culture and parents' social connections have a huge influence in the difference between these scenarios.

Do we have any evidence of this?

[mleok]

As for the debate over who makes the most money or has the best chances of finding a good job--that's largely a red herring.  Any good college education in any major should prepare a student well enough for the job market, if the student is prepared to work at it.  But fear that majoring in anything other than STEM or business will condemn you to poverty is driving students away from the study of the humanities--a study that could greatly benefit them--in droves, and needlessly.  We're all likely to end up poorer for it.

As a mathematician, my department has "benefited" from the current emphasis on employability, in the sense that the size of our mathematics major has increased by a factor of five since I have arrived, and is now the third most popular major. But our faculty size has remained flat, and our upper division classes are now filled by students with neither inclination nor talent in mathematics, but think that getting a C average in the major will help their career prospects.

Let me put it this way, at the current juncture, I would prefer to teach lower division calculus to non-majors than our large upper division classes, because the distribution of motivation and talent is now roughly comparable between these two types of classes, and at least with calculus, you're not really tasked with getting them to think extremely deeply.

[kaysixteen]

What does someone with an undergrad math major, who does not go to grad or professional school, and does not become a teacher, typically end up doing, career-wise, and is this different based on *where* the math undergrad degree was earned?   What, IOW, do these rapidly increasing number of math majors expect to do with their degrees?

[mleok]

What does someone with an undergrad math major, who does not go to grad or professional school, and does not become a teacher, typically end up doing, career-wise, and is this different based on *where* the math undergrad degree was earned?   What, IOW, do these rapidly increasing number of math majors expect to do with their degrees?

Well, at least in my department, a big segment of the majors are in a "Math-CS" major, which sounds like a double major in mathematics and computer science if you're not familiar with our program, and most of these students will leverage that to go on to a job which require some general mathematical/technical/modeling skills coupled with strong programming skills. In general, if you don't go on to graduate school, or take the actuarial exams, then the typical math major is not going to get an entry-level position without the ability to program.

[spork]

[. . .]

What I wanted to know, specifically, was, if a poor kid gets a humanities bachelor's degree are they unable to climb the professional ladder? 

Do we have numbers that illustrate how humanities degree holders are unable to overcome socioeconomic limitations?

Does a humanities degree confer no socioeconomic benefits to students from lower socioeconomic strata?

None of these questions are the topic of this thread. On average, people who obtain bachelor's degrees earn more than people with only high school diplomas.

Oh Spork.  I have been responding directly to this for several posts:

someone who is first-generation, from a rural area, is not very likely to be able to do so unless the degree is very career-focused. The culture and parents' social connections have a huge influence in the difference between these scenarios.

Do we have any evidence of this?

Students who are the first in the families to attend college make statistically different college major selections than otherwise identical students

Rich kids study English

Note that the author of the Atlantic piece majored in English at Penn after attending an elite private high school in Silicon Valley.

What does someone with an undergrad math major, who does not go to grad or professional school, and does not become a teacher, typically end up doing, career-wise, and is this different based on *where* the math undergrad degree was earned?   What, IOW, do these rapidly increasing number of math majors expect to do with their degrees?

Well, at least in my department, a big segment of the majors are in a "Math-CS" major, which sounds like a double major in mathematics and computer science if you're not familiar with our program, and most of these students will leverage that to go on to a job which require some general mathematical/technical/modeling skills coupled with strong programming skills. In general, if you don't go on to graduate school, or take the actuarial exams, then the typical math major is not going to get an entry-level position without the ability to program.

A liberal arts program at one university becoming more clear career path-oriented, I assume in response to enrollment trends, which in turn are likely driven by economic concerns of students and their parents.

People in traditionally-organized and delivered humanities programs can wail about the true economic and cultural value of those programs all they want, but it won't make a difference because those arguments are not persuasive to the majority of the people who are now attending college.

[Caracal]

Students who are the first in the families to attend college make statistically different college major selections than otherwise identical students

Rich kids study English

Note that the author of the Atlantic piece majored in English at Penn after attending an elite private high school in Silicon Valley.

What does someone with an undergrad math major, who does not go to grad or professional school, and does not become a teacher, typically end up doing, career-wise, and is this different based on *where* the math undergrad degree was earned?   What, IOW, do these rapidly increasing number of math majors expect to do with their degrees?

Well, at least in my department, a big segment of the majors are in a "Math-CS" major, which sounds like a double major in mathematics and computer science if you're not familiar with our program, and most of these students will leverage that to go on to a job which require some general mathematical/technical/modeling skills coupled with strong programming skills. In general, if you don't go on to graduate school, or take the actuarial exams, then the typical math major is not going to get an entry-level position without the ability to program.

A liberal arts program at one university becoming more clear career path-oriented, I assume in response to enrollment trends, which in turn are likely driven by economic concerns of students and their parents.

People in traditionally-organized and delivered humanities programs can wail about the true economic and cultural value of those programs all they want, but it won't make a difference because those arguments are not persuasive to the majority of the people who are now attending college.

This is
a. Not persuasive, as to the actual economics. I believe that people think that liberal arts degrees are unlikely to lead to career success. And its also
b. Pretty dumb. Which could be said for your whole take on this conversation. I'm not trying to make a personal attack, its just that people can get so dug in to making a reductive argument and so convinced that others who don't agree just don't get it that they just make increasingly silly points that miss what everyone else is actually talking about.

Yes, we all understand that people interested in maximizing their earnings are going to go into certain STEM fields right now. And, they aren't wrong about those choices. Some skills are in particular demand. That's just the incredibly obvious point. I promise, we all understand, you don't need to tell us that engineering majors make more than English majors.

And yes, we understand that people, including students and parents believe that humanities degrees are particularly likely to lead to  particularly poor earnings and outcomes. However, there isn't any compelling evidence that people are correct about this. That's where we get to the dumb part. You seem to believe that the incredibly obvious point that comparing earnings of different majors is misleading given that it reflects differences in talent, interests and career goals is some sort of dodge.

The other dumb part is the continuous invoking of the wisdom of the market. Of course it matters and is a problem that majors in humanities disciplines are declining. However, you seem to basically believe you work at a KFC and if the Molten Chicken sandwich isn't selling its time to discontinue it. That isn't hard headed, it's dumb. You don't work at a KFC, you work at a non profit institution. Those institutions have to deal with people's preferences and ideas about value, but they don't need to just give in to them, because that isn't actually their mission. They should, instead, try to find ways to persuade people that, for example, a psychology or political science degree actually doesn't really give people better career prospects than a degree in History or English. This is partly about the importance of humanities disciplines, but it is also about allowing students  find ways to figure out what they are good at and interested in.

[Wahoo Redux]

Oh Spork.  I have been responding directly to this for several posts:

someone who is first-generation, from a rural area, is not very likely to be able to do so unless the degree is very career-focused. The culture and parents' social connections have a huge influence in the difference between these scenarios.

Do we have any evidence of this?

Students who are the first in the families to attend college make statistically different college major selections than otherwise identical students

Rich kids study English

Note that the author of the Atlantic piece majored in English at Penn after attending an elite private high school in Silicon Valley.

[/quote]

Still not the simple question I asked.

I wanted to know if poor kids who studied English et al., in lieu of a "practical" degree,  actually DID suffer a lack of upward mobility, as some seemed to be claiming.

I think there simply simply too much noise in your head, Spork, to hear that.

We DO know that English majors do just fine on the job market...but again, some people have such a roaring going on their heads that they cannot think past it----what Caracal said much more eloquently, in other words.

[polly_mer]

[. . .]

What I wanted to know, specifically, was, if a poor kid gets a humanities bachelor's degree are they unable to climb the professional ladder? 

Do we have numbers that illustrate how humanities degree holders are unable to overcome socioeconomic limitations?

Does a humanities degree confer no socioeconomic benefits to students from lower socioeconomic strata?

None of these questions are the topic of this thread. On average, people who obtain bachelor's degrees earn more than people with only high school diplomas.

The key terms are "on average" and "degree".  Very few poor kids who go to college graduate: https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/indicator/2016/10/graduation-gap is from 2916, but nothing I remember from more recent articles indicate a positive change and articles in the past quarter indicate most poor people enrolling in underresourced institutions or sitting out higher ed entirely due to Covid.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/02/19/a-college-degree-is-worth-less-if-you-are-raised-poor/ points out another reality that isn't news to those who have observed community members with college degrees.

Sara Goldrick-Rab at Temple does a lot of work in the area of how poverty affects college experience and subsequent outcomes, especially at non-elite institutions.  In many cases, the poor kids are choosing to work now while attending part-time, often at places that don't have humanities BAs.  A humanities BA from a good school isn't even on the table because of limiting factors.

The social justice advocate mass media discussions based on social science is filled with information on what it practically means to be poor.  A lot of that can be summarized as having zero room for error and no safety net when a cobbled together current status falls through.  I know exactly the feeling of having $6.34 in my bank account and a refrigerator that should get me through to Friday.  I know exactly the feeling of signing over all my college savings as a teenager  to my mother so she could pay the monthly bills that were already a month behind.  I know exactly the feeling of both of us being furloughed during a government shutdown and knowing there is no one we can ask to lend money and even the local minimum wage jobs aren't hiring.

I have been poor and yet I know people who have had it so much worse because they don't even get to have their own place with a full refrigerator most of the time.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/snap-hunger-challenge-not-really-a-poor-grad-student-after-all_b_1891318 resonates with me.


There is a path out of poverty that involves a humanities BA.  Step 1 is getting into an elite institution, ideally in elementary, but college is not too late for some people.  The privileged poor who get on the path early and assimilate into the relevant SES networks do very well.  However, that often means becoming a different person and possibly disconnecting from childhood networks, either voluntarily or by being shunned as uppity/snooty/elitist.

The kicker in many cases is having the resources and adaptive ability to assimilate.  The same media outlets that publish quit lit and adjunct porn also tend to have articles on the problems of being bright and being unable to do the social activities due to having to work and still having too little money compared to fellow students.

Two years ago, there was a huge uproar abour Harvard paying work-study students to clean dorm toilets https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/10/debate-raging-over-harvards-federal-work-study-program:

Knowing what a long shot the path to middle class is with a humanities BA for people starting where I did, I chose the state school STEM path, as did almost all my friends who had any possibility of completing it.  About half my college friends didn't finish a college degree.  I have, however, paid for a BA humanities degree once my PhD got me an upper-middle class job and my husband could afford to be a full-time student in anything he wanted.

Another possible path that involves significant strategy is marrying well.

[Wahoo Redux]

There is a path out of poverty that involves a humanities BA.  Step 1 is getting into an elite institution, ideally in elementary, but college is not too late for some people. 

Knowing what a long shot the path to middle class is with a humanities BA for people starting where I did, I chose the state school STEM path, as did almost all my friends who had any possibility of completing it. 

We've gotten hung up on the unchallenged notions that poor kids choose practical degrees and that poor kids face significant challenges in college.

That was not what I wanted to know.

What I was asking for was information that shows a humanities BA stymies upward mobility for poor kids, which once again seems to be the indication.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

someone who is first-generation, from a rural area, is not very likely to be able to do so unless the degree is very career-focused. The culture and parents' social connections have a huge influence in the difference between these scenarios.

Do we have any evidence of this?

This can be easily derived from 2 observations:
1) Income of post-secondary graduates is strongly affected by parental income
Canadian data, but I suspect this effect  is even stronger in the US
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2019012-eng.htm
2) Earnings for the 25th percentile of English graduates are not particularly middle class
web tool
https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/pseo_explorer.html?type=earnings&specificity=2&state=08&institution=00137000&degreelevel=05&gradcohort=0000-3&filter=25&program=23,14

I.e. if one is likely to end with below median earnings for a chosen major, humanities are not a good choice

[Wahoo Redux]

someone who is first-generation, from a rural area, is not very likely to be able to do so unless the degree is very career-focused. The culture and parents' social connections have a huge influence in the difference between these scenarios.

Do we have any evidence of this?

This can be easily derived from 2 observations:
1) Income of post-secondary graduates is strongly affected by parental income
Canadian data, but I suspect this effect  is even stronger in the US
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2019012-eng.htm
I.e. if one is likely to end with below median earnings for a chosen major, humanities are not a good choice

Okay.  This is interesting.  I played with it a bit. This information varies a great deal depending on percentile, institution, and state.  You linked to the 25% percentile in Colorado at U of Bolder.   

Again, looking around at the sampling, lib arts and humanities majors are securing in the middle class after 5 years in every one of the samplings.  Humanities majors do not make as much money as engineering or business, granted, but they are not baristas.

The thinking seems so stuck on this issue.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

Okay.  This is interesting.  I played with it a bit. This information varies a great deal depending on percentile, institution, and state.  You linked to the 25% percentile in Colorado at U of Bolder.   

I have used 25 percentile as a proxy for graduates from low status families.
University of Colorado is a solid institution in an economically growing state (both parameters favourable to graduates regardless of the major).

Again, looking around at the sampling, lib arts and humanities majors are securing in the middle class after 5 years in every one of the samplings.

Indeed. This makes it a perfectly acceptable choice for students rich enough not to take large students loans.
Waiting multiple years to get a middle class salary is very detrimental for long-term financial well-being for somebody with tens of thousands in loans.

Humanities majors do not make as much money as engineering or business, granted, but they are not baristas.

Some of them clearly are.
In the same link there is a "flow" data type.
"Accomodation and food services" and "Retail trade" employ (280+232)/1844= 28% of english graduates one year after graduation
Same metric is (89+108)/4948=4% for engineering graduates

[Wahoo Redux]

Fair enough.

Same school: Same database: One year out:

English Language and Literature/Letters: $18,910

Health Professions and Related Programs: $17,784

Education: $23,391

Biological and Biomedical Sciences: $19,130

Parks, Recreation, Leisure, Fitness, and Kinesiology: $18,565

Psychology: $19,479

Mathematics and Statistics: $24,703

Social Sciences:  $21,137

Which again is only the bottom 25% percentile.  What it looks like it a rough first year for a lot of graduates who are not in Business, Computer Science, or Engineering.  This is typical for American workers.  That was my experience on the job market, actually, when I graduated undergrad in the early '90s, as it was for most of the people I knew.  Anecdotal?  Perhaps, but I think it is also fairly standard.

At 10 years out (approx. 31 or 32 years of age, which is a long way away from most people's maximum earnings, BTW), English Language and Lit grads in the 25% are making an average of $36K, not great but well above poverty level for a family of 4.  Okay, maybe we don't consider that upwardly mobile if we are the sole breadwinner----but there are too many variables there (do we pay for childcare?  Are we married to another income earner? etc.)

The 75% percentile same school, same database looks like...

English Language and Literature/Letters: 1 year out: $36,430; 5 years out: $54,698; 10 years out: $72,306.

The other disciplines follow suite. 

As for Flow, "Accommodations and Food Services" drops each successive year in all disciplines, which seems to me is the college degree in action.

Interestingly, business lists "Accommodations and Food Service" as 116 out of 3,481 surveyed after 10 years out; while "English Language and Literature" lists 43 out of 857----and in some ways this does not tell us very much; do we know if any of these are managers or buyers or executives or are we flipping burgers here?

All of this seems to be what we already know and any simple answer here seems incomplete.

So I don't know what anyone thinks they've proved here.

[Caracal]

Okay.  This is interesting.  I played with it a bit. This information varies a great deal depending on percentile, institution, and state.  You linked to the 25% percentile in Colorado at U of Bolder.   

I have used 25 percentile as a proxy for graduates from low status families.

Why would that be a good proxy?

[Wahoo Redux]

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/02/19/a-college-degree-is-worth-less-if-you-are-raised-poor/ points out another reality that isn't news to those who have observed community members with college degrees.

This one was very interesting, and it indicates, as Polly said, that poor kids with a college degree earn less than rich kids with a college degree.

College graduates from families with an income below 185 percent of the federal poverty level (the eligibility threshold for the federal assisted lunch program) earn 91 percent more over their careers than high school graduates from the same income group. By comparison, college graduates from families with incomes above 185 percent of the FPL earned 162 percent more over their careers (between the ages of 25 and 62) than those with just a high school diploma

But will still have to acknowledge that the degree is paying off, even if we acknowledge that degrees from the Ivies vs. degrees from the U of State City Colleges have different earnings potentials, which may account for some of the discrepancies in earnings along with the socioeconomic factors held over from childhood:

What's behind this rather startling gap? There are a host of possibilities, from family resources during childhood and the place where one grew up, to the colleges that low-income students attend. My colleagues and I are currently investigating and weighing these and other factors. We are also looking to see if our overall findings hold up in other data sets and time periods.