Popular College Majors Changed Abruptly After the Financial Crisis (qz.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Ten years have passed since the 2008 financial crisis, and the effects linger. For one thing, the crisis produced a significant shift in American higher education. Scared by a seemingly treacherous labor market, since the downturn college students have turned away from the humanities and towards job-oriented degrees. It's not clear they are making the right decision. The humanities were humming along prior to 2008, according to an analysis by the Northeastern University historian Benjamin Schmidt. Over the previous decade, disciplines like history, philosophy, English literature, and religion were either growing or holding steady as a share of all college majors. But in the decade after the financial crisis, all of these majors took a nosedive. The popularity of the history major is an illustrative example. From 1998 to 2007, the share of college students graduating with a degree in history averaged around 2%. By 2017, it had fallen closer to 1%. (All data in this article are based on reports that colleges submit to the US Department of Education.) Other humanities majors saw a similar fall. "Declines have hit almost every field in the humanities... and related social sciences," wrote Schmidt in the The Atlantic. "[T]hey have not stabilized with the economic recovery, and they appear to reflect a new set of student priorities, which are being formed even before they see the inside of a college classroom."

Comments

Re: Everyone wants a golden parachute

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why they join Antifa. They get frustrated and blame others.

There really isn't very much of that

[rsilvergun]

If anything most of the shouting down & censorship is done at the left.

Basically, the right wing are running a victim complex to deflect attention away from their own actions. Think about it, the political right have complete control of virtually all branches and levels of government. There's a handful of left leaning districts in CA & NY, but nationally they've got the House, Senate, Presidency and locally they have virtually all the State Legislatures (they were just shy of calling a constitutional convention when a few crazies ruined for them by getting busted for sexual harassment so extreme it couldn't be ignored).

I know it sounds like I'm trolling, but that's kind of what makes going after the American Right wing so hard. It's called Poe's Law. The stuff they're engaged in is so terrible you can't distinguish from somebody doing it and somebody making fun of it. But it's real. All of it. I'm sorry, but it's high time we wake up, smell the coffee, and put our house in order.