I was curious what sort of relationship there might be between recent trends in international students (who I expected would more frequently major in STEM than humanities than the typical American population) and the article's noted decrease in humanities majors.
In [0], the share of college students that is international rose from ~3% in 2010 to ~5.5% in 2017. And from the table in [1], in 2017, about 2% of international students majored in "Humanities" by the strictest definition, though that expands to 10% if you include "Intensive English", "Communications and journalism", "Humanities" and "Legal studies and law enforcement".
The low share, though, definitely suggests that American college students are choosing humanities majors less.
Interestingly, Harvard in particular is focusing a lot on boosting its engineeering programs, including a $1 billion science and engineering campus expansion set for 2020. [2] So looking at recent stated major intents from Harvard applicants is expected to have a trend towards STEM.
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-studen...
[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/us-universiti...
[2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/24/engineering-har...
In [0], the share of college students that is international rose from ~3% in 2010 to ~5.5% in 2017. And from the table in [1], in 2017, about 2% of international students majored in "Humanities" by the strictest definition, though that expands to 10% if you include "Intensive English", "Communications and journalism", "Humanities" and "Legal studies and law enforcement".
The low share, though, definitely suggests that American college students are choosing humanities majors less.
Interestingly, Harvard in particular is focusing a lot on boosting its engineeering programs, including a $1 billion science and engineering campus expansion set for 2020. [2] So looking at recent stated major intents from Harvard applicants is expected to have a trend towards STEM.
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-studen...
[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/us-universiti...
[2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/24/engineering-har...