As STEM majors soar at UW, interest in humanities shrinks
seattletimes.com
seattletimes.com
The impacts of encouraging students to major in those fields has led to a vast skills imbalance in our workforce, and the sad situation of people with lit and history BAs taking unskilled jobs or jobs that are a poor fit for their skills. (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/fear-of...)
For those who graduate with PhDs in these fields, it's nearly impossible to get hired as a professor or researcher. There just aren't as many academic jobs available, and yet, amazingly, there are now more English and History PhDs awarded every year than 30 years ago (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/28/more-humaniti...):
Humanities programs awarded 5,891 doctoral degrees in 2015. That is the largest number recorded back to the start of collection of such information in 1987. The figure was 3,110 in 1988, then rose steadily to 4,994 in 2000, dipped to about 4,700 from 2002 to 2007, and then started going up again, year after year.
As that article notes, jobs in those fields "are increasingly hard to come by." Yet the universities keep churning out PhDs in these fields, to keep the tuition rolling in and as a source of cheap labor for undergraduate instruction.
Regarding the following quote in the Seattle Times:
Academics worry that the nation would be impoverished — both culturally and intellectually — if only an elite few understand the arc of American history, know how to find meaning in poetry, or can discuss the ideas of the great philosophers.
This argument seems to be trotted out in many articles about the future of liberal arts, but it's a weak one. For decades many colleges have created core curriculums that require even the most hard-core STEM major to take a range of liberal arts classes. And, as noted later in the article, "the broad general education we want for all of our students is increasingly done at the high-school level." IMHO that's not a bad thing - particularly for those students who will never attend college.
One other comment: Not all STEM majors are created equal. For certain majors such as biology there are not enough available entry level jobs for BSc grads, let alone for PhDs (who often find themselves applying for some of the low-level jobs intended for people with bachelors or masters degrees).
It’s funny because the marketing from Universities often highlight the professional value of a degree, essentially casting it as a “choose the best career ROI” decision. That and the high tuition naturally result in these sorts of outcomes.
As a former STEM major I never took liberal arts classes after high school, even though I enjoy history. I now get my inspiration and delight through Great Lecture courses and other content on YouTube.
Often, the best teachers are not at a research-intensive university anyways. Because, guess what, those professors are too busy writing books, working on their research, tooting their horns, to care much about teaching the next wave of undergrads.