Too many chasing too few jobs. The benefits will inure much more substantially to those at the elite level…
I have no opposition to double majoring in anything. But the vast majority of the kids who post on the forum looking to attend a Top X college are usually aiming for STEM or the closest thing the college has to a business major. If they mention that they’re considering a double major, it’s usually another STEM/business-like major.
Additionally, my point is that, especially at a Top X school, a humanities major can be a practical major; it doesn’t need to be relegated to a passion/hobby major. People who only have a humanities major can then step into a practical field.
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But they are not practical if you look at the salary dispersion… However, there is likely to be compression as jobs are fewer and far between…
Another trend is that many employers are removing unnecessary credential requirements - including college degrees - for entry level jobs. This is a reversal of the trend over the past 40 years where employers became increasingly credential happy. I am speculating here, but my guess is that employers have figured out that they can hire a smart HS grad rather than a college grad to do a job that requires only basic skills, common sense and a work ethic - and they can save some money too.
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I joke with the wife that my son can have a history or philosophy minor as long as he is pulling good grades in his engineering major. As things stand now, he is a MechE major with a Business minor. I would not be surprised, however, if he changed majors to Material Science.
Under a capitalist society, employers would hire humanities majors if they performed at the positions in question.
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There are plenty of humanities majors succeeding in business jobs, for example, including various banking roles.
I think part of the issue is that students don’t do their research (in HS and/or in college) so they don’t understand the full gamut of career options for humanities majors.
Humanities majors also have good med school acceptance rates (obviously they would need to have taken all the med school course requirements.)
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Again, largely just from the elite schools. Otherwise, what explains the salary dispersions on average by major?
I see many such comments, but there doesn’t seem to be a large decline in employment stats at either elite or non-elite level. % of CS grads unemployed remains at similarly low levels to previous years, and median salary of new CS grads continues to increase faster than inflation and remains higher than other majors. Some example stats are below. The date ranges are the oldest and most recent available. All salaries are converted to 2024 $.
Representation of All US Colleges
2014: CS --73% employed ($81k in 2024 $) / 8% grad school / 10% seeking work
2022*: CS --72% employed ($102k in 2024 $) / 16% grad school / 10% seeking work
*Tech crash occurred in 2022
Yale
2016: CS --89% employed ($130k in 2024 $) / 6% grad school / 0% seeking work
2023: CS --68% employed ($145k in 2024 $) / 15% grad school / 3% seeking work
Not enough humanities students targeting business jobs.
I’m just hypothesizing that’s because they don’t know they may in fact be qualified for X job in banking, etc, with a history or English major…I get that sense but don’t have supporting data. Generally humanities majors would need to have some quant skills, learned in class, or via certifications or via a job/internship to compete for a business or consulting job.
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Again, no incentive to encourage this as generally Econ or STEM majors will have better skills for consulting/finance…
I agree. Most people know Duke for its public policy and medical schools, but in fact Duke’s humanities offerings have long been extremely strong — top 3 for classics, religion, French, etc. in the last NRC rankings (2010), and literature is a standout too (#1 for literary criticism per USNWR).
Unfortunately, most of these departments do not do a good job of marketing themselves.
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Right, but these are hobbies, like music, unless and until the economy selects for them…
I expect med/law professional schools are for the most part undergraduate degree ambivalent. It doesn’t matter what you major in so long as you complete the pre-med requirements and have a solid GPA. Humanities majors who matriculate to med schools have average stats of 513 MCAT / 3.76 GPA. The full population who matriculate to med schools have average stats of 512 MCT / 3.77 GPA – almost identical to the humanities majors. The higher acceptance rates for humanities majors seem to more relate to slightly higher average stats among humanities applicants than typical applicants, which I expect mostly involves to self selection at the student level.
Unlike professional school, an increasingly large portion of 4-year college grad employers expect the student to learn a professional skillset related to the job position during college, rather than train a grad who has a general liberal arts education on how to do the core job position. This relates to the higher salary CS positions noted above. Employers are willing to pay a premium for grads who have shown that they are skilled at programming in desired languages via interview testing and relevant work experience. Employers often don’t want to train a humanities major with little CS experience on how to program. To cut down on time and expense many such employers state that applicants must have degree in CS or related major in job posting. It’s a similar idea for engineering and a good number of other majors associated with higher early career salaries.
Humanities majors often have fewer employers who are willing to pay a premium for the skillset acquired during their major. This contributes to why many take jobs in positions that don’t require a college degree. For example, the Federal Reserve Bank lists the following rates of underemployment + unemployment by major. Underemployment is defined as working in job position that typically does not require a college degree. The majority of grads in humanities majors are listed as either being unemployed or employed in jobs that do not require a college degree. The median early career salary of ~$40k seems to reflect this.
Liberal Arts – 64% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $38k
Fine Arts – 64% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $38k
History – 61% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $40k
English – 57% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $42k
Foreign Language – 57% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $43k
Philosophy – 51% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $41k
…
Mathematics – 31% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $65k
Mechanical Engineering – 22% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $70k
Computer Science – 21% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $80k
Computer Engineering – 15% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $80k
Nursing – 12% underemployed + unemployed, salary = $69k
As you touched on earlier, humanities grads from “elite” colleges may have better opportunities than typical due the finance/consulting connection. Their home college may also have employment opportunities for new grads. For example, continuing with the earlier Yale example, the most common employers by major are below. The most common employer of Yale humanities grads was Yale University. Among the general population, it may be more difficult to find a job at their home college or find a desirable position at finance/consulting firms.
English – Yale, Fulbright, Manhattan DA, Charter HS
History – Yale, Bain, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Teach for America
Foreign Language – Yale, Bain, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, ACES Village School
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Your numbers make more sense - I remember the 600,000 number but despite finding it very high (which is why it stuck with me) I had no way of knowing how to evaluate it. Wondering if it might relate not to graduates but to students enrolled in courses or total across fr/soph/jr/sr who declared this as a primary major?
×3, ×6,×7, even ×10 is incredible though.
Not necessarily. The technical skills required for many starting positions in finance and consulting are limited. Investment banking analysts spend a lot more time writing pitch books than using math beyond basic algebra or statistics. They need to be facile in quantitative areas, but also need to be facile in written and verbal communication, synthesizing information and summarizing it, etc.
I am of course excluding things like quant hedge funds and derivatives trading, but an accounting class, a finance class, a couple Econ classes and stats classes (plus experience with Excel and PowerPoint) pretty much cover the skills needed at many positions in finance and consulting.
I do think that colleges should do more to encourage humanities majors to take more classes like the ones above. Most people wind up working in commercial enterprises, so having a basic understanding of this stuff can be helpful not only for getting a job but for their general education about the world.
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Compared to some small liberal arts colleges, Duke now graduates fewer students in majors as diverse as classics, anthropology and physics. However, to be fair, zero, as in the recent figure for Duke classics majors, will not hold up well in most comparisons.
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This is actually a really interesting point. If a student attends a school like Duke, with it’s strong name brand, did the student select it because of it’s name and therefore was more interested in their own marketability attached to the Duke name? If you attend a LAC, which often has much less name recognition and likely especially so at smaller employers who may not have recruited from that college before, did you attend because you were potentially more interested in your own learning and less on the marketability of your degree? Would you be more inclined to do a humanities degree at a LAC because you’re interested in that type of knowledge versus going for the STEM degree that’s more aligned to getting a job?
Just hypothesizing here - seems like an interesting idea that the big schools may have a bigger problem with the lack of humanities versus LACs.
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D23 is a STEM major, but S25 will apply humanities (history). We’ve always set our expectations for them this way - college is a place you go to further your academic pursuits and to grow as a human being. That goes for kids of all majors.
I don’t worry about our humanities major any more or less than I do our STEM major in terms of employability. The skills they are learning/will learn in terms of responsibility and commitment coupled with their curiosity and passion will serve them both well when they are ready to graduate and find a job.
It’s sad to me that more kids don’t explore the humanities in college, thinking STEM = $ and humanities = 0. We need both. The lopsided STEM vs. Humanities numbers are showing up in our culture in more ways than just college admission rates.
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In 2024, Duke had 2 grads in classical languages and 1 classical civilizations. It’s still lower than many LACs, but Duke has only had exactly 0 classical language majors once. They’ve had 2 of fewer classics (language) in 8 of the past 10 years. Classics has been low for many years and remains low. Other majors have had more drastic changes over the past decade. For example, there were 99 history majors in 2012 compared to 16 in 2024. The history major decline has been almost as rapid as the CS major increase. Many other colleges show a similar pattern. More detail about most popular majors and majors with largest change in enrollment at Duke is below. Totals below include both primary and secondary majors, so stats may differ from earlier posts and news story.
Most Popular Majors at Duke: Class of 2012
- Economics – 232
- Psychology – 181
- Biology – 167
- Public Policy – 151
- Nursing – 144
- Biomedical Eng – 123
- Political Science – 105
- History – 99
- Electrical/Computer Eng – 84
- English – 83
- Mechanical Eng – 72
- Neuroscience – 61
- Computer Science – 60
- International Studies – 54
- Chemistry – 51
- Mathematics – 51
- All Others – Less than 40
Most Popular Majors at Duke: Class of 2024
- Computer Science – 423
- Interdisciplinary Studies – 259 (new)
- Economics – 196
- Biology – 171
- Public Policy – 162
- Nursing – 135
- Psychology – 129
- Electrical/Computer Eng – 100
- Political Science – 99
- Biomedical Eng – 89
- Neuroscience – 89
- Mathematics – 83
- Mechanical Eng – 75
- Statistical Science – 60
- All Others – Less than 40
Biggest Increases (with sample size of at least 20 students in 2024)
- Computer Science – Up by 7x
- Statistical Science – Up by 3.3x
- Env Science + Policy – Up by 2.3x
- Mathematics – Up by 1.6x
- Neuroscience – up by 1.5x
Biggest Decreases (with sample size of at least 20 students in 2012)
- History – Down by 6.3x
- Asian Studies – Down 3.2x
- Spanish – Down by 2.7x
- English – Down by 2.7x
- Philosophy – Down by 2.6x
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