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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."
Oooh, so that was the reason....people got wind of the uselessness of (most of) those degrees (especially the WAY they are taught), enrolment decreased, and the response of the humanities was.....the insane politicking and the march against logic, reason, knowledge, discipline, learning, critical thinking, diversity of opinion, open mindedness, freedom of thought and speech....etc.
Figures!
No one is going to bail out a history teacher.
So degrees that were never big money makers in the first place are now huge financial losses since the economy has taken a hit, so people are avoiding them?
>It's not clear they are making the right decision.
I mean, if by "right decision" you mean "not bankrupting themselves", then I'd say it's quite obvious they are making the right decision to skip out on these humanities degrees.
There was a time (you know, back in the baby boomer days) when having a college degree was meaningful. It really didn't matter what the major was. Employers saw a degree and found that to be indicative of a good potential employee.
Today, college degrees aren't meaningless, they are a minimum expectation. Few
entry level white color jobs don't have a college degree as a minimum requirement to even get your application a set of eyes. But it's not even just the degree anymore. Entry level job postings will require a degree in a related field. That typically nixes humanities. So, parents and high school councilors know this and discourage studying humanities.
Honestly, I would discourage my children from studying humanities too.
College costs have been rising and is expected to be financed by student loans. Student loans are now mostly private with up to 8% in interest rates.
It makes no financial sense to get yourself in $40,000-$50,000 in debt to get a humanities degree. Doing this will actually decrease your earnings as you have to make payments with 8% interest rates.
You can get the same knowledge with MOOCs.
Those majors are only for the independently wealthy now, not for the average person.
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%
Woohoo! I'm a 1%er!
Honestly though, I studied history because I enjoyed it and it was incredibly easy for me. I always planned to go to grad school afterwards to get myself a more marketable degree.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's not clear they are making the right decision
How is it not clear that.a bunch of people turning away from History to study something they can use to get a job is the right choice?
Sure history is important, but not to the degree that we need a TON of history majors.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think UChicago has a good setup in their Core Curriculum where all students take a series of interdisciplinary sequence intended to give students analytic, critical thinking and writing tools as a foundation for their education. By introducing students to the basic inquiry tools used in all fields they are better prepared when pursuing a specific discipline; as well as for critically thinking about ideas from all disciplines.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The US perception of education is so broken its not about getting educated anymore it's about paying for a job placement. The conversation here is going to be nothing but how that imaginary pipeline is only served by technology focused disciplines. So what's the point of bringing it up at all as a conversation point. People here can't fathom why anyone would get a degree in history when there are bridges to be built and that's pretty fucking sad.
The actual study by the history prof is far more interesting, and has far more data. Ignore the silly article by the journalist.
http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2018/07/mea-culpa-there-is-crisis-in-humanities.html
Students and their Parents since 2008 lived through some pretty tough times in most of the first world. The economy has been flat outside of China and STEM for a decade with little job growth for those without a STEM degree, while STEM students make twice the national average wages in year 5 of their careers. A history major with a degree from 1976 is still looking for a better job outside of the public sector while the STEM worker is in post-retirement consulting or doing nothing beach combing. In 1980s parents only had one short economic downturn to demonstrate the fruitlessness of a German romance poetry degree.
Now if we can wipe the standalone education degree from curriculum we would have better paid teachers in high school prepared to teach STEM to 14 to 18-year-olds. Also with carrer moblility one can give up the Mechanical Engineering track and fall into a IT track with all of 4 days of loss effort and bring a diversity that IT departments can use.
It's not just high school curricula that have fallen flat in the last two generations, it's the college ones as well. Look at what a Liberal Arts major had to take pre-WWII and compare that to 2018. You were expected to demonstrate a decent education in everything from history, to writing, to math and music. The idea was to create a broadly educated man who, while not a master, was a sufficiently decent "jack of all trades" that they could hit the ground running competently in most white collar fields that weren't STEM or law.
Tell me what an English major with a minor in Queer Studies who wrote her dissertation on how lesbians were oppressed in 19th century Britain is going to do to add value to any organization other than a LGBT advocacy group or something equivalent. Students have been quickly realizing that no one cares if you have a degree if your value is non-existent.
to a civilization. Contrary to popular thought you _can_ teach critical thinking. But you can't do it with Math. Math is too difficult a subject and there's no value in being 50% right.
As for why you want people to learn critical thinking, well, what's one of the first things a fascist does when he seizes power? Even before he goes after guns? That's right, they crack down on the intelligentsia. Fascism can't exist in a country of critical thinkers. People see past the bullshit.
As for why _you_ want to pay for the humanities (and with it a nation of critical thinkers), unless you get lucky and become one of the fascist's todies that doesn't get powerful enough to be killed (boy that's a fine line to walk, just ask anybody in the North Korea) then you're gonna be part of the working class. And do you really want to be part of the working class of a fascist dictatorship? Again, just ask anybody in NK...
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Humanities pays almost as much as science (not computer science). Why would anyone pay $30k/year for any degree? It really only makes sense if you're going into a highly lucrative career such as finance or becoming a doctor or lawyer. Even then, it's tough to argue it needs to be so expensive.
"Instead, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying—in a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market."
"Students aren’t fleeing degrees with poor job prospects. They’re fleeing humanities and related fields specifically because they think they have poor job prospects."
"If the whole story were a market response to student debt and the Great Recession, students would have read the 2011 census report numbering psychology and communications among the fields with the lowest median earnings and fled from them. Or they would have noticed that biology majors make less than the average college graduate, and favored the physical sciences. Most 18-year-olds are not econometricians, and those that are were probably going to major in economics anyway."
"But most of the differences are slight—well within the margins of error of the surveys."
I think this is where Schmidt really messes up. Maybe some students are still not avoiding some of the bad economic choices, but I think after story after story of people who go bankrupt from choosing the wrong college degree and suffering from the college debts and being worse off financially than if they had gotten no degree at all, I think students listened to those stories.
"The top-paying college majors earn $3.4 million more than the lowest-paying majors over a lifetime."
Source:
https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...
Millions of dollars seems more than a "slight" difference to me.
Schmidt left off a few important graphs: 1) The decline of humanities compared to the cost of college over time. 2) The average income by degree.
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With the cost of degrees going up (and an economic depression in living memory), new students are focusing on education that can offer financial security and a stronger return on investment.
If anything, this is a positive sign for the future.
I think a lot of millenials got screwed by parents who suggested that any degree will work. Most teenagers need to be guided into good decision-making, and some parents failed to do that.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
"It's not clear they are making the right decision." Why, because it adversely affects the Humanities diploma industry?
Except a "highly lucrative career" doesn't always panned out. A friend spent $64K per year for four years to send his daughter to NYU to become a Broadway star. While she had minor roles in off Broadway productions during the summers, she never landed a role after graduation. She came back to home to work at Staples while working for free in local productions. She will be a star — someday.
Students need a good paying job to repay huge students loans.
What does a history major say when greeting new people? "Welcome to McDonald's! Would you like fries with that?"
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
People don't care what historians tell them, so we don't need many of them. The masses can ignore what just a handful of them say as easily as many.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not inferior but certainly not as useful.
Which is fine if that's your passion or you want to try to make it work, but don't then whine to everyone about the financial burden you agreed to to get your questionably useful degree ( which is a popular pasttime for humanity degree holders ).
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Not everyone is independently rich enough to take useless degrees just for fun...
"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."
Um, seemingly scared by a treacherous labor market? This is like saying hey after looking at the evidence I'm not sure the evidence is right. The market only needs so many humanity degrees and it appears before 2008 we had a glut. Seems like a simple market check. In this case the market is education. If there was a great demand of good paying jobs in say teaching history, guess what would happen.
Also, a college education costs a lot of money. One can only hope people are looking at what kind of jobs and what they can earn, before choosing a major. Happiness isn't only dollars and cents, but blindly taking out 100k in loans without thinking of how to pay it back is not smart. As a number of people have found out.
STEM and business tend to suffer a lot of tunnel vision
So do history majors - it's just that in tech the tunnel prevents them from seeing anything around them, with history majors they are prevented from seeing anything that happened past, say, Rome... and even then they get things badly wrong (see: all misconceptions around the "fall" of the Roman Empire).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is no longer Homer, Plato, Socrates, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Sir Francis Bacon, etc.
It's now Genderqueer, Third-wave feminism, Queer Theory, Postcolonialism, and every other SJW Leftist Mind Fuck you can think of.
The plural of anecdote is not data. However, I will share my counter example. I paid $35k a year for a philosophy degree back when that was about as expensive as schools got. Then went to law school, got a masters in tax law, and started at a six-figure job right after graduation during the worst part of the recession. Yes, it was very expensive ~$200k all in, but I paid my loans back within 5 years. I wouldn't change a thing.
The problem is not majoring in humanities- it's going to school with no particular interest or plan for what you will do afterwards. I know people who majored in hard science and struggled afterwards. There's not much you can do with a B.S. in biology or physics career-wise, but nobody jokes about the uselessness of a biology degree. If you want to major in those subjects, you need a plan for what you will do afterwards.
It's an interesting position to take. Humanities are required in the science and engineering fields - I had to take at least six classes of English, languages, arts or philosophy for my engineering degree.
Now universities are eliminating math requirements from humanities curriculums. Because, apparently, structured critical thinking skills are not required in a rounded university education.
At the very least make everyone take a statistics class. That's the one thing everyone seems to botch.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Sounds like you are bitter about not majoring in business.
A good student with a humanities degree has very marketable skills, particularly in language and communication. They can identify and rebut bad arguments, make convincing and valid arguments, and even make bad arguments sound convincing. These are commercially valuable skills. The problem isn't the "uselessness" of the subject matter expertise they accrue. Many of the programmers I know studied physics or math. My friends who studied electrical engineering? Coders. They haven't designed a chip since their honours project.
When's the last time NP-completeness or Turing machines were relevant to the typical /.er's work? It's a rarefied few who put to use their knowledge of compiler or kernel design. Nevertheless, the skills learned in mastering those subjects are the reason they are able to analyse and solve analogous problems. The same goes for history majors. The true cause of the fall of the Roman empire is lost to time, if there ever was a "true cause". But the skills learned by formulating arguments pro et contra Gibbon's views enable them to coherently parse and argue analogous debates.
The smart humanities graduates I know are bond traders (philosophy), lawyers (history, linguistics), bankers (English), marketing executives (classics), journalists (political science), and business owners (women's studies). The stupid ones serve coffee, just like the stupid engineers and computer scientists who work in tech support. The problem is that universities have allowed many more of the stupid to graduate from humanities programs than they have from STEM programs. It gives the rest of us a bad name.
Let's focus on the problem with humanities - the decline of academic rigour. And let's focus on the problem with universities - mass enrolment for profit. If we keep pretending that everyone should be going to university, and the trend of rising STEM enrolment continues, then it won't be long before standards in STEM subjects start to fall. Do your non-genius kids a real favour - let them study a trade.
need to have student loans with bankruptcy!
Only way to get school cost under control
There is a pervasive mindset in CS majors I have run into that all that matters is coding. Far to often they jump right in and start barfing code down without understanding the real application. The result in major rip-up whenever a requirements doc is not bulletproof (and when are they ever?). Training them in school to design an overall approach, mockup the UI, get sign off from customers, then finally code it up would make a lot of projects go faster and better in the long run.
In school this shows up as a mindset of getting through all their CS classes in the fastest, least engaged fashion possible. TA'ing a EE class for CS majors was eye-opening and depressing. Many of them dry lab'ed their work claiming they didn't need to test their solutions (many bits of their assembly code were just wrong).
I don't think that History majors being added in will solve this. I do see a need for CS to mature. Perhaps in another decade or two the churn in languages, frameworks, etc will settle out and they can pull their heads out of their Mountain Dew pile to smell the roses, who knows... I work with a lot of EE's turned coders who got their jobs specifically because pure CS majors struggle when understanding complex RF things being processed in software/firmware cannot be handled by simple function calls. A coder with some RF and math background handles this stuff in stride.
Except a "highly lucrative career" doesn't always panned out. A friend spent $64K per year for four years to send his daughter to NYU to become a Broadway star. While she had minor roles in off Broadway productions during the summers, she never landed a role after graduation. She came back to home to work at Staples while working for free in local productions. She will be a star — someday.
A degree in the arts does not make you a more in-demand artist, or give you a leg up against other artists that have learned their trade on their own. It's a hard lesson to learn - it should probably be a disclaimer that every art student should sign.
There's no getting around the fact that college is extremely expensive. It makes perfect sense to me that people entering college today, unless they have a full scholarship and a "free pass" like inheriting a family business later on, wouldn't be studying humanities. They're going to try to maximize their employability if they have the ability to do so. I majored in chemistry 20 years ago, and this was because I realized that I wasn't going to be able to handle the math in the engineering curriculum I was aiming for, AND that some random business management or psychology degree wasn't going to be a good return on investment.
I'd say the students trying to be as employable as possible are making a smart decision. However, I wonder if the humanities people are going to have the last laugh. Automation and offshoring are rapidly eating up entry level STEM jobs and humanities are going to be one of the few things an algorithm and cloud automation platform aren't going to be able to handle. When I went to school (graduated 1997) it was almost a guarantee that anyone getting through a degree program would find work somewhere. Large corporations would basically do cattle calls for all the management school grads and send them off to some random entry level job doing TPS reports. I'm thinking it's a little different now...Accenture sent the TPS report processors offshore, Infosys runs the company's IT from India, etc.
I also wonder this...we're in the middle of the Second Dotcom Bubble, which started inflating right after the financial crisis (iOS and Android gained ground shortly after this, followed by cloud, DevOps, etc.) Are we seeing tons of new computer science grads the same way we did when everyone in 1998 was getting a CS degree? Are they chasing the money again and lining up to be JavaScript front end developers for 6-figure salaries at hip startups?
IMO there's nothing wrong with going to college...at worst it's a good way to grow up a little bit before heading into the real world. If you get into a top 10 school, it can change your life because no one graduating one of these schools will ever fail to find an opportunity. If you don't, you can go to a "regular" state school, work hard and find a path to success that way. The not-so-smart money is in these little private colleges...that $50K+ investment per year really needs to pay off, and unless you're in the particular niche that these small colleges funnel grads into, you'll just be left with six figures of debt and no better off than a state school grad.
People can't walk away from education because our society holds traditional "sit-in-a-seat" education to an almost religious standing. You nearly can't do anything today without a college degree. So, there is no upper limit to how high college can cost. No matter how high the price, families will pay it because they believe they have to. If you don't, you are almost guaranteeing your own child will have limited opportunities.
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.
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Portland state university came up with a "Pay it forward" Idea, whereby everyone would get some free tuition but pay a percentage of their post-graduation salary. Which probably just means stick the STEM grads with the bill. But you never know, some theater major may become the next Kardashian and fund everything.
Nullius in verba
In a few years, there might be a shortage of history, philosophy, English literature, and religion majors LMAO, said no one ever!
will not give you a career. Except teaching others the same worthless degree.
I am glad I dropped out of college in 1994.
Corporatism != Free Market
Yeah it is.
if you've got a college degree then employers know you're at least stable enough to make it through a 4 year degree.
Now, if they weren't currently being allowed almost limitless access to imported foreign labor in the form of multiple work visas (don't trust the "caps", there's so many ways around them I can't list them all here) then that might not be a factor. But, well, I've yet to see any sign of any politician reigning that in. I was hoping really Trump would (he said he would), but so far he's burned me there. He still hasn't reversed the Obama era executive order allowing spouses of H1-B holders to work. That alone was tens of thousands of jobs closed off to American workers....
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People misunderstand what computer science actually is, where it came from, and therefore what it means to study it. As someone smarter than me put it, "Computer science is to computers what telescopes are to astronomy." The computer is just the tool, it's not the ends. People take, or at least should take, computer science with the intent to understand the mathematics, algorithms, and so forth behind the science of computing. If the goal is to just write code then there's community college for that. If someone wants to know how to write code to meet a specification then that's engineering.
Seems to me that it took decades for people to understand the distinction between computer science and software engineering. There's been some good software engineers that studied computer science, just like I met some good mechanical engineers that studied physics in college. Your experience mirrors mine, I've had classmates that major in engineering, computer science, as well as other majors, and there is certainly a different mindset among those in engineering and those in the sciences. Too many people have majored in computer science thinking that's what people take to write good code. It's not, and employers learned this too. I've heard recruiters talk about avoiding computer science majors until they've run out of engineering majors to hire.
CS didn't need to mature, it was doing what it intended. What we needed was software engineering to mature as a discipline separate from EE, math, computer science, and the other realms from which it drew. I see this now in where I went to university, they didn't have a software engineering program. They didn't even have a formal computer engineering program separate from EE. Now they have both a computer engineering program and a "major track" in software engineering for people in EE, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and other related majors. We'll probably see Software Engineering define itself more in the future and become a formal degree program that's separated out further and become a distinct major soon.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
see for a study citation that shows most of the censorship on campus is directed at left wing people. Make of it what you will but the study appears accurate. As for Milo, he was welcome to speak at the campus in question. They asked him to pay for his own security, which is the standard practice for controversial speakers who are likely to result in violence. It doesn't matter who causes the violence (left, right, white, black or purpose), what matters is that the even was deemed risky and required security and the school wasn't going to pay for it.
Now, if you want a public space with full security paid for by tax payer dollars that's fine. But that's not what schools are. They're places of learning. The tone of your post implies an alt-right bent, which would mean you'd oppose taxpayer funded safe spaces for people to speak. Personally as a lefty I'm all for it. I'm also for mandating voting as a means of ending voter suppression and requiring people to participate in society.
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"Monkey it up" is not a common phrase - mess it up, fuck it up, screw it up, yes, but monkey it up? There was definitely something on the Republican candidate's mind and I figure it was more dog whistling than warning to his fgollowers.
Nope.
"The term "monkey this up" is a U.S. Navy slang term. And DeSantis was in the Navy, so he used words known in parts of the Navy world."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com...
I bet you have no problem with lofty ideals such as telling people not to "monkey things up" by electing a black candidate.
You are proving the point of others, of the "politicized intelligentsia" redefining things, or misinterpreting things out of ignorance, in a gratuitously political manner to frame a debate or assassinate an opponents character.
In reality the phrase is old Navy non-racial slang and the candidate was in the Navy.
"‘Monkey’ Navy slang
Concerning the "monkey this up” comment by gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis: The meaning of words depends on one’s personal experiences.
The same words mean different things to different people. The term "monkey this up" is a U.S. Navy slang term. And DeSantis was in the Navy, so he used words known in parts of the Navy world. Others heard something different, but that does not mean that DeSantis was trying to refer to race or anything else other than to say let's not goof up the good thing we've got going in Florida (my words, of course)."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com...
And yet, not two days later we learn that DeSantis just quit a racist Facebook group that he claims he was "unwittingly" an admin of.
https://www.snopes.com/news/20...
Sometimes, you just have to use a little common sense. DeSantis spent more time at Ivy League schools than he did in the Navy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
America has plenty of liberal arts students. As it is, at most universities, liberal art students have very little science, math, or even business, while the rest of degrees have plenty of liberal arts (the first is bad, the second is good).
The real problem is that far too many are taking business which really is not needed. We need more science, engineering, math, etc. Far too few in any of these.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And yet, not two days later we learn that DeSantis just quit a racist Facebook group that he claims he was "unwittingly" an admin of.
According to your citation, the group was named "Tea Party". Hardly a stretch to image a conservative might join a so named group. Plus your citation also states that a friend who is in a group can add you to the group, and that any admin can assign a member admin rights. I've had that happen to me and was mildly surprised.
/.. The real question is has the candidate posted racist or bigoted content, liked or shared such content, etc. And your citation answers that, he made no posts to the group.
As far as racist or bigoted content appearing in a group, well you and I are certainly guilty of that too. Others post that crap on
Also it is quite an exercise in political spinning to say that "Tea Party" is somehow inherently racist. To do so is evidence that one is merely attempting to manufacture perception to frame a debate, and yet again this sort of silliness is proving the point of others, not yourself.
Sometimes, you just have to use a little common sense.
Yep, group has innocuous name, others can add you, others can assign admin rights to you, no posts by candidate ... the facts match his explanation. Opinions to the contrary are "conspiracy theories" and we certainly wouldn't want to have anything to do with those.
DeSantis spent more time at Ivy League schools than he did in the Navy.
Irrelevant. The Navy has absolutely wonderful terminology and phraseology and word smithing that stays with one for life.
Had I RTFA, I would know this answer to this question: what happened to the number of job offers received by graduates in these various degree programs?
Or rather, I would know if the FA answered the question.
If none of the comments provide the answer, I'll just have to slog through it, myself.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.