I don’t find it peculiar. Engineering is a challenging major that requires a good amount of math. It has a relatively low persistence rate. This touches on differences between major distribution across students attending colleges in the US as a whole vs students attending highly selective colleges. The latter shows a much stronger focus on fields associated with higher income. Some example numbers I listed in a previous post are below, which are several years old.
Across US colleges as a whole, students tend to choose vocationally focused majors for which there is a clear link to employment rather than liberal arts majors. Nursing → nurse, Accounting → accountant, Biology → doctor, Engineering → engineer, … rather than majors with a less obvious career connection to typical students English → ???, Art → ???, History → ???.
Among highly selective colleges, the most popular majors are almost always the ones associated with the highest earnings – CS, engineering, biology (with intention to pursue MD), economics (with intention to pursue finance/consulting), etc. Again English, art, history, and the like have low percentages; but for somewhat different reasons.
Most Common Major Categories at All 4-Year Colleges in US
- Nursing / Health Professions – 12%
- Business – 8.5%
- Biology – 6.8%
- Psychology – 6.7%
- Engineering – 6.4%
- CS & Related – 5.4%
- Education – 4.5%
- Visual/Performing Arts – 4.5%
- Interdisciplinary – 2.7%
- Finance – 2.3%
Most Common Major Categories at 25 of the Most Selective Private Colleges
- CS & Related-- 12%
- Engineering – 11%
- Biology – 11%
- Economics – 10%
- Math / Stats – 5.0%
- Political Science – 4.7%
- Psychology – 4.0%
- Interdisciplinary – 4.0%
- Physical Sciences – 3.8%
- Visual/Performing Arts – 3.6% (Northwestern outlier influences total)
For both groups, there has been an increasing portion pursuing tech in recent years and a decreasing portion pursuing humanities. The percent pursuing CS has had an especially large increase. At highly selective colleges, it’s common to quintuple enrollment in under a decade, increasing from a relatively unpopular major to the most popular major at the college. One recent trend that may relate to AI fears is in the past year or two, some colleges have shown a decrease in CS enrollment. It’s often not visible among graduates yet, but the decrease is in the pipeline with changes in major enrollment.
Example numbers from Stanford are below. CS has had a notable decrease at the same time that engineering fields and pure math (not Math CS) had notable increase. I expect some would be CS majors switched to engineering/math instead due to AI fears. As a whole they did not switch to humanities majors or others associated with lower earnings. Instead the majors with largest % decreases in enrollment were all humanities fields, such as philosophy and English.
Stanford Majors With Highest Enrollment 2022 → 2023 → 2024 → 2025
1 . Computer Science: 20% → 20% → 19% → 17%
2. Engineering (all fields except MS&E): 15% → 15% → 15% → 17%
4. Biology + Human Biology: 10% → 9% → 9% → 10%
3. Math / Math CS/DS: 6% → 6% → 6% → 6%
4. Economics: 6% → 5% → 5% → 6%
6. Symbolic Systems: 5% → 5% → 5% → 5%
7. Management Sciences & Engineering: 3% → 3% → 4% → 4%
8. Psychology: 3% → 3% → 3% → 3%
9. Political Science: 3% → 3% → 3% → 3%
10. Science, Tech, and Society: 2% → 3% → 3% → 2%
Majors With Largest % Increase from 2022 → 2025 (with min 20 enrollment)
1 . Bio Engineering
2. Chemical Engineering
3. Electrical Engineering
4. Mathematics
5. History (2024/25 was perceived to be a key historical time)
6. Mechanical Engineering
Majors With Largest % Decrease from 2022 → 2025 (with min 20 enrollment)
1 . Philosophy
2. English
3. Anthropology
4. American Studies
5. Comparative Literature
6. Art Practice
The post was dissected and redirected to talk about an increase in engineering majors in some specified schools. MY POINT is that outside the CC bubble, the reality is that only a small percentage (6%) of overall college students major in engineering.