The reverse is already happening although folks don’t like to admit it.
Freshman Bio classes- 500 students in a lecture hall with one professor, and review sessions taught by TA’s. Freshman “Understanding Socrates” class- 19 students, one professor, every review session taught by that same professor who also maintains open office hours.
The folks on CC who complain about large classes clearly have never looked at the enrollment in “Giotto and his contemporaries”, “The role of dissident literature in the dismantling of the Iron Curtain” or “Ugaritic and Akkadian Flood narratives”. You want personal attention, a professor who knows your name and how you like your coffee, and will help you pick a research topic, suggest extra reading, review your outline, pick up the phone to get you a job as a research assistant/editor for a colleague? Major in the humanities!
Well, I’m a data point of one, but this English major adapted her skills to a technical career but later parlayed them into upper-level management. It was always the communication, writing, and problem-solving abilities that served me best, and I always looked for those first in hiring. Among those in the C-suite, the humanities are not underrepresented.
You make (always) great arguments - and your knowledge of things like this is second to noen.
But is this happening - because there are less and less of these classes and professors, etc. best I can tell.
But yes, at any school, you can find those majors or even classes with smaller student counts - as they post the max sizes and spaces available for all to see - but some also get canceled if too small.
It amazes me people fall all over themselves to go to a UCLA, as an example and have that exact experience you just mentioned.
And students from wealthy families have less pressure to choose a college path prioritizing post graduation job prospects to pay off their student loans. Of course, labor markets and industry conditions can change significantly in four years, so choices made at college entrance may not end up with the desired results at college graduation.
This is partially mitigated by having wildly varying class sizes. At colleges like Stanford, Duke, or Harvard; it’s common for CS classes to have hundreds of students. The more popular intro classes or AI classes may have near 1000 students. In contrast, the vast majority of in-major classes in a less popular humanities major may have under 10 students.
Of course. The point is simply that the humanities aren’t hampering anyone from getting where they want to go in life and making a good living, whatever that looks like for them.