Good morning. With October being National Arts & Humanities Month in the US — and the fall semester now in full swing for college students — we’re exploring that seemingly ever-rarer educational pursuit: the humanities degree.

Subjects to change

‍Fittingly, perhaps, how you define “the humanities” is up for debate. The National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency established in 1965, sets out at least 12 subjects within the field — the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, on the other hand, whittles it down to just 4 core areas in one measure. We’re opting for the latter in our analysis, but however you choose to slice and dice the data, the conclusions leave little room for nuanced discussion: the humanities are in trouble.

With the cost of college rising with nearly every year that passes, students are beginning to question the inherent worth of humanities majors. Whether it’s exploring the linguistic intricacies of James Joyce’s Ulysses, digging into the military strategies of Chinese dynasties, or attempting to pick apart the theories of long-standing titans in the philosophical arena, fewer college goers are willing to devote years of their educational careers to the traditionally “softer” subjects.

Les Misérables

‍The fall of the humanities is not a new phenomenon — there was a swathe of pieces written on the topic this time 10 years ago. But since then, humanities majors have become an even rarer sight on campuses: the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in English, a subject often placed at the heart of the decline, has fallen every year since the 2011-12 academic period. Indeed, last year only 33,249 students completed bachelor degrees in English Language and Literature/Letters, compared to over 55,000 in 2009. Other key humanities subjects like history and foreign languages, literature, & linguistics have followed similar trajectories, down 39% and 36%, respectively, from their 2010s peaks.

While the popularity of courses in the humanities has been taking a serious hit, other subjects have been making up ground, as students look to put their increasingly-costly college focus in other areas.

Classics vs. coding

‍20 years ago, roughly 8% of all US bachelor degrees were attained in the 4 core humanities subjects — a figure that’s fallen every year since 2007, with the share now sitting at just 4% per data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Conversely, STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math) have been growing at an unparalleled pace, as students swap Charles Dickens for computational dynamics and Jane Austen for Javascript.

Indeed, computer science has risen from a 2.7% share of all degrees in 2009 to 5.4% by the end of 2022, while engineering has risen from 7.2% to 9.4% in the same time frame — more than double the share that the core humanities subjects currently occupy.

Man vs. machine

‍The rise of computer science as a subject is particularly interesting. The oft-repeated “learn to code” mantra likely rings loud in the ears of the 49% of arts and humanities majors who wish they’d studied in a different field, per the most recent Economic Wellbeing of US Households survey. Things might be starting to change, though, as the development of coding bots and generative AI threatens, ironically, computer science’s status as a “safe major”.

Interestingly, advocates of the humanities have been pointing to the burgeoning world of artificial intelligence as evidence of the importance of attributes that students can hone in humanities classes — like situational awareness and developing a personal voice  — or “distinctly human skills”, in comparison to coding, as a New York Times writer posited recently.

STEM sells

‍Still, if students have their eyes trained on post-college life, STEM subjects like engineering and computer science continue to make sense. A YouGov survey found that 61% of Americans believe a major in engineering leads to “above average earnings”, while just 19% felt the same way about studying foreign language — and that was the highest-rated humanities subject.

Those generalizations are borne out in earnings data, at least per 2023 analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which reveals that STEM disciplines dominate the post-college earnings tables. In fact, a typical graduate from any of the 9 different schools of engineering in the study can expect to earn over $100k a year by the mid-point of their career, with degrees in computer science, finance and pharmacy also good for breaking into the six-figure club.

By comparison, students who majored in foreign languages, English language, philosophy, or history are typically taking home $65-70k by the midpoint of their career, with higher rates of unemployment. According to the data, 9.1% of grads who majored in philosophy and 7.8% who majored in foreign languages are unemployed, compared to an average of 4.6% for engineers. Fine arts graduates are most likely to be unemployed after leaving college, with a staggering 12.1% unemployment rate for students from that discipline.

‍Oh, the humanities!

‍As a data-driven newsletter, you might assume we would cheer the decline of the humanities, celebrating the rise of hard-nosed number-obsessed graduates. But, even we view the trend with more than a tinge of sadness — as our job is as much about finding human connections to relatable data-driven stories, a skill often honed through studying culture, as it is raw number-crunching in spreadsheets. The problem for would-be writers, linguists and historians is that — with college costs rising and incomes falling behind — the math just doesn’t quite seem to be adding up.

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