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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!
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.
As yet, MOOCs are valueless to students. The value of a college degree is still wrapped into the pedigree of the college it's received from. That may be completely unfair, but it's true. If I'm an employer and I see a student with a degree from the University of Texas and one with a degree from Online Southern Highlands Institute of Technology, all else being equal, I'm going with the Longhorn. Every time. Why? Is there any indication that the UT grad worked harder? Not necessarily. But I know UT and their pedigree. I don't know OSHIT.
I think the financial crisis highlighted to a lot of people that maybe they are not in the right financial class to be pursuing degrees with little to no market value. I wouldn't call the liberal arts "useless" in a greater metaphysical sense, I like art, I like a good story, I appreciate skillful use of language, and good poetry speaks to the soul. But except for a very small number of people who possess great talent, it is difficult to monetize the degree; it remains primarily a way of expanding your knowledge, it is primarily a luxury. That and a dime won't buy you coffee.
So for the largest portion of population they are seeing college degrees in the liberal arts in the same way that most of us look at athletics: something to pursue if you are born with the right genes and you spend your entire life maximizing that potential. If you do not, you won't make it.
Once upon a time universities were primarily for the very rich, with a few of the less wealthy brought in because their tremendous talent was recognized. The idle wealthy were basically paying the way for a few very gifted people. In the past 50 years, that has changed and most people can find a way to attend a university if they want to, but they need the degree they earn to pay for it, and to acquire a career that justifies the time. They basically cannot afford a luxury, they need to make an investment in their future. No sane person would argue that a humanities degree is a good investment in the future.
I'm not sure this story is really all that exciting, except to a marketing dweeb to see where cultural changes are redirecting money.
"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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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.
The self proclaimed intelligentsia look pretty dumb in light of safe spaces, shouting down others as a primary form of debate, and their love of double standards. They are pretty proud of themselves but the rest of the world holds them in contempt. They are not heirs to such lofty ideals as "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" or "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." As far as facism not existing among critical thinkers, you may have a point but universities are bastions of intolerance and group think so there is in fact a negative correlation between universities and ability to think critically.
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.
Can I come to your house and scream at you about why my value system is great, and your value system is terrible? How about your job? Want to invite me along next time you go jogging or riding a bicycle so I can mock your religious views? Can I sit shotgun on your morning commute and berate you about your lifestyle choices?
A speaker coming to a campus, like Milo Yiannopoulos who had his speaking event canceled at a campus near me, is not screaming at me from the passenger seat in my car. These are people that reserved a space on a campus and if you don't like what they have to say then invite your own speaker. In fact I'd be fine if you hold up some placards outside the event. What should never be tolerated is violence in response or disrupting the event with noise making and screaming. If you want the freedom to share your views then you must tolerate those you oppose to speak as well.
Care to have me preach about satanism at your local church?
No? Are those safe spaces for you?
I do feel that my church is a safe space. I suspect that if you ask nicely that you might actually be allowed to speak on satanism at the church, perhaps not during scheduled Sunday worship but the building is open to many diverse groups to meet, such as a local ham radio club that meets in their basement.
You have a misunderstanding of the term safe spaces. It should be obvious by now that most people have plenty of "safe spaces". But, imagine you're a LGBTQ college kid who shares a 12' x 12' dorm room with a bigoted moron. Where do you go to get away from that.
You get away from that by a complaint to the people that run the residence halls. They don't want to see those assigned a room together to get in fights and such so they will find another room. At a minimum they would be most likely willing to let someone out of the contract, I was able to do that because I was not happy in my room. It wasn't a roommate issue, just that the room was only 12x12.
And I agree that shouting down others as a primary form of debate is awful, and all too common. But if you think it's somehow limited to liberal college kids, you must have a very narrow view of the world yourself.
No, I'm pretty sure it's limited to liberal college kids. Most anyone else in college is too focused on doing their calculus and the rest just plain grew up.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.