Are the Humanities Doomed?

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

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.

The humanities are now a worse option not because of change in outcomes income-wise.
The tuition increases since early 1990s means that increasing fraction of those outcomes are not compatible with size of loans poorer students need to take (and with increases in the cost of living in places where many jobs are).
In the changing world it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. Most of humanities are not even walking.

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

Decline in humanities is a result of rational choices an increasing fraction of students is taking.
Humanities are not unique in being subjects to such pressures (e.g. closed geology department in University of Vermont, fired physics professor from twitter etc).
Humanities (in their current form) are not the first to lose influence following socioeconomic changes: decline in relative role of classics since late 19 century may be a good example

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

Why would that be a good proxy?

The reason is twofold:
- there is correlation between status of the parents and earnings of post-secondary graduates. So, outcome for a student from a poorer family is better approximated by looking at 25th percentile
- focussing on median implicitly ignores plight of graduates with worse outcomes. This is not very humanitarian.

[marshwiggle]

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.

I would imagine what most parents and prospective students would mean by "particularly" poor would be related to what high school graduates who didn't go on to PSE could be making without having  the lost time and potential debt of PSE.

So if a high school graduate could start earning right away, whereas another student would spend four years and potentially go into debt, even a few thousand dollars more for the PSE graduate wouldn't seem like a big attraction since it would take several years to catch up.

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.

Has the decline in humanities enrollment coincided with similar growth in psychology and political science? If not, that's not going to solve the problem. And I'm not sure that lots of people choose psychology and political science because of the perceived high earning potential. (Anyone able to prove/disprove this?)

[Wahoo Redux]

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.

The humanities are now a worse option not because of change in outcomes income-wise.
The tuition increases since early 1990s means that increasing fraction of those outcomes are not compatible with size of loans poorer students need to take (and with increases in the cost of living in places where many jobs are).

I guess so.  But your own database indicates that most majors and most workers face similar situations after college.  And your database indicates that all graduates work their ways up the socioeconomic ladder. 

Plus we must acknowledge that not every student comes from a poor background.  If childhood poverty is your only metric, okay, but this discussion is about all students, not just poor kids.

Should students be making life choices based solely upon post-graduation salaries?

And perhaps it is my own inclinations toward music, theater, literature, and creativity----and the people I have surrounded myself with who are also interested in these things----but college is not just about making money.  This statement seems to irritate some people who only want to use business jargon when referring to college degrees or who only want to discuss upward mobility and income.

So I wonder about "social capital" that we gain in other ways related to a college degree. 

Social workers, for instance, are seldom wealthy people, but their jobs are extremely important and carry some cache.  The same can be said of journalists, teachers, professors, and various government workers----we can also say that these people have climbed the social ladder even if their incomes are not as robust as business majors.

[polly_mer]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." is frequently attributed to Upton Sinclair.

What would be convincing to you, Wahoo?

Is there anything that could be convincing short of literally every humanities degree holder everywhere living in abject poverty, even those who end up as faculty at Harvard?

Mid-30s after years of experience is indeed terrible when typical average starting salaries for elite institutions and engineering/CS majors are such that the humanities folks bring the average down to only $50k: https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/compensation/Pages/average-starting-salary-for-recent-college-grads.aspx

How does one get a $50k starting salary?  Generally, it's by having the years of experience needed through co-ops and internships, either as direct experience or through a network of people who think that "only" $50k + benefits is an entry-level position.

We don't have the numbers you want as part of a scientific study because almost no one who is truly poor (lowest SES quintile in the US):

* goes as an 18-22 year old to postsecondary institutions that have humanities majors that result in a BA
* gets counted as a full-time, first time student attending only one institution prior to graduation (the IPEDS collected data)
* actually majors in the humanities.

It just does not happen enough to matter. 

Better advertising by the humanities of specific outcomes for people with good social capital who will be recruited out of college for a job unrelated to their major will not change the base starting place of people who are choosing to delay college, go part-time while working full-time or more, and have to have a major that teaches specific skills for which employers will hire a stranger and the entry level positions will be full-time with benefits and a career ladder to climb.  I don't know what paid internships/coops look like in the humanities; I can easily find good regional comprehensives who have that kind of earning while learning in STEM, business, social work, teaching, and human-services-adjacent majors like psychology.

Anyone who looks at the completion rates for poor people combined with the loan totals for those who do complete compared to their expected starting salary and says, yeah, take out $30-50k in loans for a job that will pay $30k/year after a decade of experience has failed at quantitative reasoning.

Who is worse off for taking out student loans?  The poor people who don't finish their degrees and now owe several thousand dollars that might as well be a million based on their current income: https://talkpoverty.org/2016/05/02/why-student-loan-debt-harms-low-income-students-the-most/

The middle class people who end up with a lot of student debt, but then have a medical degree or top-flight law degree pay back their student loans.

The poor people who tried community college for a couple semesters and then had to drop out due to having complicated lives end up with almost no debt comparatively speaking, but are very likely to be on the non-paying list.

"Everyone" starting college as desperately poor betting big on college being economic mobility knows people who worked their butts off and still didn't graduate, but now has student loans.

Nearly everyone will know someone who went to college, came home, and now has the same job they could have gotten right out of high school, but with student loans and lacking those four years of experience to move up to the next level.

Middle-class people who will end up middle-class can afford to study what they like in college.  Poor people who have been paying attention and do a whole afternoon of internet research will make other choices.

[Ruralguy]

My school's psych majors tend to be interested in law enforcement (police/fbi) and teaching/coaching. My school's poli sci/government/international relations majors tend to be interested in  law (attorney) and politics.  The only one that really has potential to make real money (as in salary, not  growth of invested income) is attorney, and many of them don't make all that much.  All in all, I doubt this is a path that guarantees anything more than a typical humanities major..at least not for our students. I don't have the  income data though, but I think it does exist. I'll try to find it out.

[Wahoo Redux]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." is frequently attributed to Upton Sinclair.

What would be convincing to you, Wahoo?

Is there anything that could be convincing short of literally every humanities degree holder everywhere living in abject poverty, even those who end up as faculty at Harvard?

Now, now, this is when I tune you out, Polly.

Convince me of what, exactly?  I disagree with nothing you have posted and yet I get a catalog of things I wasn't arguing about.

Just out of curiosity, what is it you want me to say?

[polly_mer]

Social workers, for instance, are seldom wealthy people, but their jobs are extremely important and carry some cache.  The same can be said of journalists, teachers, professors, and various government workers----we can also say that these people have climbed the social ladder even if their incomes are not as robust as business majors.

The fast way to stay not-quite-as-desperately poor is to get a degree in social work or education and then return to the old neighborhood.  There's currently a shortage of social workers and teachers in many places because those are hard jobs every day for the money involved.  You have not become middle-class in most cases by taking those jobs, especially in the places that need them most.

Journalist as a middle-class profession is dying so fast that I can't believe you haven't been reading about those problems in the same media outlets that do adjunct porn, quit lit, and problems of being bright in elite institutions.  Just this week, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/opinion/student-loans-cares-act.html appeared.

Many local/regional governments are underfunded and therefore working for them is a bad bet if the goal is financial security.  One way that Black women college graduates end up earning substantially less with their college degrees is working for local/regional government because that's where their network gets them jobs.  If the pension plan holds out, then the trade-off might be worth it, but that's a much less good bet than it used to be.

Money isn't everything, but having sufficient money to be able to pay all the bills, have an emergency fund, and be able to make choices based on interest instead of price is a goal for many people.

Those of us who know mostly social workers, teachers, low-level government workers, and the local journalists who are working extremely hard and terrified about losing their jobs would not choose to go into those professions when so many better choices exist.

[Wahoo Redux]

Again, I am just curious: What is it you want me to say, Polly?

[polly_mer]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." is frequently attributed to Upton Sinclair.

What would be convincing to you, Wahoo?

Is there anything that could be convincing short of literally every humanities degree holder everywhere living in abject poverty, even those who end up as faculty at Harvard?

Now, now, this is when I tune you out, Polly.

Convince me of what, exactly?  I disagree with nothing you have posted and yet I get a catalog of things I wasn't arguing about.

Just out of curiosity, what is it you want me to say?

I'm just frustrated that you still appear to be asking the question of, Yeah, but where's the data stating that a humanities degree is a bad bet for people who aren't already in the comfortably middle-class and higher?, in the face of mountains of evidence.

You've explicitly listed questions of why people don't choose the humanities and what could be done to change that in the face of mountains of evidence that the probability of doing well is mostly a matter of where people start and the demographics for the near-future college going groups are not starting in the places where a humanities degree is a good option, if the goal is being solidly middle class.

Thus, what I conclude after years of this is you don't want to accept reality.  You're still waiting for someone to tell you that if we'd only do X, then:

* everyone who is qualified and wants one can have a good middle-class faculty position

* hordes of aspiring students will be flooding non-elite institutions eager to study the humanities because they are choosing otherwise merely out of unfounded fear instead of having different interests or different goals.

That's not going to happen in any reasonable world here.  When the humanities were most of the majors available and the goal of college was mostly social signaling or true interest in studying the humanities, then almost everyone studied them.

Now that many, many fabulous majors exist and nearly everyone who goes to college admits that getting a good job is one of the top three goals, the humanities will continue to have small enrollments outside of mandatory general education for a variety of reasons.

[polly_mer]

Again, I am just curious: What is it you want me to say, Polly?

I want you to explicitly acknowledge that studying the humanities is a niche market for those seeking a first degree.

I want you to explicitly acknowledge that most humanities faculty jobs outside the elite institutions will continue to decline.

I want you to explicitly acknowledge that you, personally, are making career plans to change jobs so your family isn't financially devastated when the collapse comes for you--non-TT person in a department that is almost exclusively gen ed service at a place that is ripe for drastic reduction in humanities faculty.  Remember when you wrote that students enroll at your R2 because it's convenient and cheap?  Yeah, that's not nearly as good as people enrolling because they love the fabulous business department and are waiting until college to take their general education requirements.

I want you to explicitly join other discussions in sounding the alarm about the realistic landscape instead of joining the chorus of "but it's working for ME!" for the adjuncts who are supported by family and the late career folks who will retire before any personal effects are felt through loss of major or even job.

[jimbogumbo]

Good job isn't the issue. Wahoo showed convincing (to me) data that the distributions of salaries are roughly the same. However, an important distinction is what are your job prospects? Even in a full employment economy, the reality is that while there are lots of jobs there aren't that many (relatively) high paying ones available to most majors right out of graduation, and market restrictions in different professions also play a role. Teacher salaries tend to be higher than psych majors because there is a negative perception of being a teacher now, but still a need. Nurses have a restricted market because in most states there are caps on nursing program admissions, a demonstrated need, while in psych there are effectively neither.

If I successfully get an elementary education degree I am (in recent years) pretty much guaranteed a job without really even having to move far from my hometown. Middle and high school, no problem. If you are willing to teach in a large urban district you are a shoo-in. The same is definitely not true for a psych major.

And, yes I know psych is a social science. But, the job prospects for an undergrad humanities or psych major (or a business major from a regional public who isn't in accounting for that matter) in a "good" paying job are very similar.

[Wahoo Redux]

You are the most interesting person I have ever talked to online.

Again, I am just curious: What is it you want me to say, Polly?

I want you to explicitly acknowledge that studying the humanities is a niche market for those seeking a first degree.

"a niche" market for a "first degree"?  No, I don't think I will concede that, mostly because I am not sure what you are getting at.  Extrapolating from what you have said, I think you are indicating that the humanities are only for students of a certain socioeconomic background or educational pedigree.  Nope, won't agree to that. 

Hey kids, if the humanities are your interest and passion, go for it!  You actually won't starve and it's your life anyway!  Make your own choices even if mom and dad want you to be an accountant!  But if you want a business degree because you desire a Beemer, that's cool too!  Maybe consider a minor!  Putting down "written and verbal communication skills" on your resume is a great line if you can submit evidence!  A minor in the humanities is also a great way to show that you have a breadth of interests and knowledge.  And if that would take too long and cost too much, consider some electives in literature or writing as these can teach you important writing skills----as someone who has spent all day grading business writing reports, understanding how to use language is very important for future business leaders!

I want you to explicitly acknowledge that most humanities faculty jobs outside the elite institutions will continue to decline.

Um, yeah.  I've acknowledge that for a long time.  For some reason the noise in your head stops you from reading that when I write it. 

In the past I have conjectured about ways to reverse this trend over the long-haul, but then COVID wiped out any hopes of this, at least for the foreseeable future. 

A lot of us are looking at collapse.  Academia at large is going to take a huge, painful hit very soon.  Too bad.

I want you to explicitly acknowledge that you, personally, are making career plans to change jobs so your family isn't financially devastated when the collapse comes for you--non-TT person in a department that is almost exclusively gen ed service at a place that is ripe for drastic reduction in humanities faculty.  Remember when you wrote that students enroll at your R2 because it's convenient and cheap?  Yeah, that's not nearly as good as people enrolling because they love the fabulous business department and are waiting until college to take their general education requirements.

Nope.  I am staying the course.  My department and school are solid.  Convenient and cheap are very important to the community we serve.

I want you to explicitly join other discussions in sounding the alarm about the realistic landscape instead of joining the chorus of "but it's working for ME!" for the adjuncts who are supported by family and the late career folks who will retire before any personal effects are felt through loss of major or even job.

Do you suppose impoverished adjuncts are looking to me as some sort of rock star they wish to emulate!?!?!  Numerous times I have advised people to ditch academia, here and in my actual professional life.  Again, there must be a lot of noise in your head.

Sorry, Polly, I may just frustrate you forever.

[Parasaurolophus]

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

Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're trying to say, but I'm not sure that data supports what you're saying:

The results suggest that the estimated earnings premiums associated with PSE are large and positive for youth from families across the distribution of income. In fact, the relative premium is considerably larger for youth from the bottom income quintile than for their counterparts from the top income quintile.

[...]

Consistent with many previous studies, the chart demonstrates that higher-educated individuals generally tend to earn more. What is new is how this relationship varies across the parental income distribution. The chart suggests that median earnings increase with more education for youth from all parental income quintiles. Median earnings are slightly more strongly associated with educational attainment among youth from lower-income families in an absolute sense. Youth from the lowest parental income quintile with a university bachelor's degree earned on average $52,238 five years after graduation, while those with no PSE earned $19,744. This difference corresponds to an absolute premium of $32,494 and a relative premium of 165%. In contrast, the gap in median earnings between the two groups is smaller ($28,922) among individuals from the top income quintile ($62,420 for those with a university bachelor's degree and $33,498 for those with no PSE). This difference corresponds to a relative premium of 86%. In other words, a university education is more strongly associated with higher earnings for youth from lower-income backgrounds in absolute and (especially) relative terms.

The same broad conclusion can be drawn about having a college education versus having no PSE. Among youth from families in the bottom income quintile, those with a college diploma earned $15,286 more than youth who did not pursue PSE (for a relative premium of 77%). Among youth from families in the top income quintile, college diploma graduates earned $11,056 (or 33%) more than those with no PSE.

It's also worth noting, however, that Canadians have one of the highest higher-education rates in the world, and we're unique in that high school education outcomes are basically the same (and good!) across the spectrum, regardless of race, socio-economic, or immigration status (the only exception are outcomes for Indigenous youth on-reserve, for seriously heavy historical and social reasons).

[Caracal]

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

Why would that be a good proxy?

The reason is twofold:
- there is correlation between status of the parents and earnings of post-secondary graduates. So, outcome for a student from a poorer family is better approximated by looking at 25th percentile
- focussing on median implicitly ignores plight of graduates with worse outcomes. This is not very humanitarian.
[/quote]

We were just talking about statistics and research methods... That doesn't work. You can't assume that humanities students have less income mobility in an attempt to prove that humanities studies is a bad choice for people from lower income backgrounds. And I can think of quite a few reasons this is a questionable assumption-not least all the questions about career options.

[spork]

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

Why would that be a good proxy?

The reason is twofold:
- there is correlation between status of the parents and earnings of post-secondary graduates. So, outcome for a student from a poorer family is better approximated by looking at 25th percentile
- focussing on median implicitly ignores plight of graduates with worse outcomes. This is not very humanitarian.

We were just talking about statistics and research methods... That doesn't work. You can't assume that humanities students have less income mobility in an attempt to prove that humanities studies is a bad choice for people from lower income backgrounds. And I can think of quite a few reasons this is a questionable assumption-not least all the questions about career options.

Don't have to assume it. It's in the data. You don't even have to look at post-college annual income quartiles. The lower the family SES, the lower the probability of completing a bachelor's degree. The lower the family SES, the lower the probability that student loan payments are a small portion of one's post-college income. Or you can just look at the median salaries I posted upthread.

The above refers to comparing college graduates to college graduates. It does not refer to comparing college graduates to people with only a high school diploma.

Also of note: "attorney" as career path for political science majors is approaching the attractiveness of "journalist" for English majors. The bottom fell out of the attorney labor market some time ago. One study I cited on the old fora, which I don't have time to hunt for now, found that 40% of law school grads were in jobs that did not require a law degree. "Lawyer" as career plan is very non-rational for a first-time, entering college student who comes from a poor background and is unlikely to be academically talented enough to get a full-ride scholarship from a top law school.

By the way, still waiting for the statistical definition of "presentist."