@ipeds_nces just released new data on degree completions for the 2021 class (the first class with a full semester during the pandemic.) History and Religion have both joined English in being down to half their 2000s peak; philosophy's rebound persists, while area studies falls.
Here's the raw size of all the fields (just BAs). The downtick in cultural, ethnic, and gender studies is notable--those had been the only fields *not* to get pulled down by the collapse of humanities majors. Also sharper-than normal drops in English, Comp Lit, languages...
Overall changes from 2019-2021. Computer Science just keeps growing--I'm not sure what's up with ROTC, but maybe a category shift. Surprising growth for psychology ("the worst major.")
Here's the slightly longer term shifts from 2011-2021. The total outlier of computer science's explosion is really clear here: so is the concentration of growth in fields that have clear career prospects.
Here's the really big picture: STEM and medical majors continue to take over. This is a choice that's been made by parents, policymakers, and students. Any talk about what happens to the humanities, the social sciences, even business needs to take this as the starting place.
The downtick in humanities this year pushes up the ETA for when CS is larger than all humanities degrees together to one of the classes currently in college.
To be clear, while wages in CS/Engineering *are* crazy high, it's a common mistake to think biology or psychology offer better employment outcomes than history or Italian literature. This is a point I made at much greater length here: theatlantic.com
Couple follow ups. 1. If you have field- or school-specific questions, I made an in-brower interactive through 2020 at @bmschmidt/duckdb-degrees" target="_blank" rel="noopener" onclick="event.stopPropagation()">observablehq.com
2. CS doesn't just inexorably rise. It's had two boom-bust periods before. Maybe this time is different, but it ain't brand new. (image)
2. CS doesn't just inexorably rise. It's had two boom-bust periods before. Maybe this time is different, but it ain't brand new. (image)
3. The CS line in this image is actually CS and Electrical Engineering, not just plain old CS; the humanities line excludes communications, which I think is a social science. pbs.twimg.com
One could go crazy over-analyzing every trend based on stereotypes, but--the decline is broadly the same shape among all ethnic groups. (IPEDs counts "Nonresident alien" as an ethnic group, so important to note that "Asian" here, e.g., really means "Asian American").
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