When I first began to apply to college, one seemingly easy question haunted me for many nights: What do you intend to major in? Even from a young age, I was drawn to the allure of history. From the tales of knights in shining armor to the details of gruesome diseases that ravaged the land hundreds of years before me, history was my passion. But when it came time to pick a major, I was hesitant.
The humanities may have been what I wanted to study, but it was hard to ignore what I had heard in college fairs and online spaces. A humanities degree would pay less and invite ridicule of the highest order. While others would be solving quantum mechanics or coding complex computers, I would be reading and talking, reading and writing and perhaps doing even more reading…
I was not alone in hesitating between choosing what I love and what is deemed a ‘productive degree.’ The number of bachelor degrees in history awarded each year has declined from 35,191 in 2010 to 22,919 in 2021 — a nearly 35% drop. The number of English degrees has dropped nearly 28% from its high in 2008. Meanwhile, the total percentage of humanities degrees conferred compared to other degrees has fallen from 17.1% in 1971 to a measly 12.8% in 2021. In the meantime, computer science degrees rose from only 0.3% to 5.1%. Business is also up from 13.7% to 17.9% while health-related fields increased from only 3% to 13%. People with tech and science degrees now also earn more money than those with degrees in “history or the social sciences” by nearly 37% along with many other benefits.
So, the humanities are now on the decline. Fewer students are choosing to study in these fields, which inevitably means less funding and which might cause even fewer students to join. It is so easy to become disillusioned with the humanities when our society seems to value the skills of statistics and coding infinitely more than the works of Hegel, Confucius or Shakespeare. Concurrently, the humanities are becoming more widely available outside of colleges and universities. What were once closely studied pieces of literature are now universally available online for sale or even free. So why do thousands of students like me still flock to a seemingly fading field of study?
I would argue that it is because fields of study in the humanities like history, English, literature and philosophy have also been bigger and more transcendent than mere numbers can quantify. While business can teach you to make money, and biology will tell you that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, little can compete with the genuine joy one feels when finishing a great work of literature. So many great people have come before us, studying and hypothesizing on the same ideas which we now contend; it is hard not to imagine what they might think of your own position. The humanities help cultivate lifelong skills like critical thinking and leadership which are easily transferable between jobs and also lead to better-paying fields like law and business. For my fellow students — do not be scared to choose that interesting-looking humanities course in the future; I promise that it will not disappoint. The humanities might be in the decline, but don’t count us out yet — there is still much to discover in the nebulous minds of humanity.
