Jane Eyre, Bartleby the Scrivener and Holden Caulfield may find their celebrity status waning as fewer college students nationwide choose to study English.
According to Inside Higher Ed, a Web site that tracks trends in higher education, approximately only four of every 100 graduates are awarded a degree in English. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of English majors dropped by roughly a third between 1970 and 2001.
Yet the number of English majors at Tufts has remained relatively stable in recent years. At Tufts, the proportion of English degrees is significantly higher, with an average of 100-110 English majors graduating in a given year in a class of approximately 1200 students.
"I think, just speaking from personal experience at Tufts, that the English major is very healthy and alive and well," English professor Carol Flynn said.
Nonetheless, students and professors of English can attest to a broader national skepticism towards the humanities. This healthy attitude towards the humanities does not always translate beyond the campus: Nationally, potential English majors may be moving towards more career-oriented tracks.
Data from The Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac shows that while 53,670 undergraduate degrees in English were conferred in the 2002-2003 school year, 105,790 undergraduate degrees were given in education for that same year, and 67,859 in "communications, journalism, and related programs."
"You tell people you're an English major, and it's kind of embarrassing," sophomore Anna Feldman said. "It might not be the most demanding course-wise...and in that regard, I guess English is the easy way out, but it is what I love."
Among some members of the English faculty at Tufts, there is a concern about the way the major is viewed, not by fellow academicians, but by the public at large.
Lee Edelman, English Department chair, said that a changing national culture has shaped the value Americans place on English degrees.
"The culture we live in is one that has grown resistant to critical analysis, debate, discussion and recognizing the importance of demonstration, persuasion and proof of argumentation. Instead, people preach to the converted. The politics of our time is simply firing up your base," Edelman said.
Sophomore and English major Sara Wilbur loves the discipline, but also elected to study it because she fears that the traditional study of English is losing its prestige.
"My new passion is education," Wilbur said, explaining that in many secondary school curricula, the focus has shifted away from the classics "in the name of diversity and in the name of progress."
Edelman said that because argumentation does not have the same value in today's society as it once had, people consider it unlikely that an English major will translate into financial success.
"I think it would be accurate to say that in our national culture at the moment there is a large premium placed on academic studies that will promote financially lucrative careers," Edelman said.
"But rather than deal with whether it is accurate or not to say that an English major provides that security, the question is whether or not financial security is the ultimate goal of an undergraduate education," he added.
Echoing this statement, Feldman said, "You're always making connections in life and that chance to grab something from the past and to make a connection - it makes you feel educated, it makes you feel good, it makes you feel informed."
Cuts in funding for the humanities may have also had a detrimental effect on the pursuit of doctoral degrees. Flynn expressed concern that cuts in money for the humanities and arts overseen by the Republican Congress and Bush White House "will trickle down to funding for professors."
This would come as a disappointment, if not a surprise, for some of Tufts' English majors.
Wilbur believes that literature's function as a conduit for social change and its incorporation of history and sociology give it great depth as an academic field.
Nonetheless, she admitted that, "If I said I was going to be a neurosurgeon, no one would look at me askance."
