Dying Majors?

What follows is a response to this article, which describes 10 college majors the author believes are in permanent decline. While I would always advise taking a grain of salt with any opinions about higher education published on a site named 'Online Degree Programs,' I think the idea of education moving away from these areas is interesting enough to comment on. My interpretation is pretty much guided by a single principle: The primary purpose of an undergraduate degree is a signal of innate ability.

Philosophy and the Classics. The article claims the number of people majoring in these areas is down. They don't offer any real data, but do provide some anecdotal evidence. Personally, I find it unlikely that these are permanently shifting down. My reasoning is that most BA degrees from Arts & Science colleges pretty much send the same signal to the potential employers regardless of the major. The ability to think, to read carefully, to do busywork that requires literacy and numeracy--these are the main things employers need to see from an undergraduate degree. Almost no one with a BA uses technical skills learned from the major in a work environment, they're all learned on the job. In this sense, Philosophy and Classics are just two flavors of the same signaling device, along with Political Science, Mathematics, English, and of course Economics. The only way these majors are actually on their way out is if students are look for more vocational training in their college curriculum. Personally, I'd like to see more people in vocational training than in traditional college studies, but I doubt this is a long run trend. More likely the relatively unimpressive economic performance of the last decade has inclined people toward more targeted skill sets. If the economy returns to the average growth we saw from 1950-2000 (and we have no reason to think it won't), I suspect this trend will reverse itself.

<insert people group here> Studies and Social Work. I'm honestly not surprised American Studies (as the article calls it) are on their way out, despite my previous statement about the BA as a generic signal. The key difference is that programs focusing on specific people groups are narrowly focused enough that they don't necessarily represent utilization of the broad skill sets of more conventional BA's, but they're still vague enough that not everyone knows what skills do get utilized (and this probably varies depending on which program at what school we're talking about). I think the article makes a good point: a literature or history degree sends a more easily interpreted signal, so these departments seem likely to absorb faculty and students from American Studies (those that don't fall victim to the recession, that is). Social Work is a bit more surprising, but much that they do could be absorbed by Psychology departments, and that degree is broad enough to appeal that if social work doesn't turn out that great (or the low pay gets annoying), there are other job prospects.

Journalism. Given the recent construction of the new Temple of Apollo Journalism College building on my own campus, I find this one a bit hard to believe. It's true that newspapers are a dying breed. Free content news sources that make use of internet technology are primarily going to replace the one or two print editions per day/week that make up the newspaper business model. Even TV news is probably going to be supplanted by sources that provide information online as it develops. But there will always be people willing to pay for information condensation and filtering (and perhaps more importantly, there will always be those who want to advertise to those who want this service). I suspect that journalism schools will shift the media tools they teach--newsprint is out and blogging is in. But as the technology makes getting information out there easier, the skills needed to attract a readership and keep them interested over time will probably have an increased demand, not a reduced. People are going to need a way to signal that they're not just armchair reporters.

Foreign Languages and Humanities. Foreign language is sort of a mislabeled degree in the first place, since the goal is always to learn not just the language of a culture but their history, customs, and common modes of thinking as well. For English speakers, this has long been largely a matter of recreation, since most other cultures are willing to adapt to the English speaking world in order to conduct business. And in as much as they are known to be matters of recreation, they don't send as good a signal as many other BAs. However, the next 20 years could easily see the rise of China and India to rival the current big 3 economic powers (US, EU, and Japan). For that matter, recent events have suggested that the staying power of the EU is not what we previously thought, so we could see a massive leveling of the playing field across eastern and western hemispheres. If this is the case, then I think we'll see two groups of people doing a lot of studying in foreign languages and humanities (or letters as it's called here): a renewal of recreational education as international trade leads to renewed growth, and people shooting for influential positions in multinational corporations. That's right, I think trade contracts in the mid-21st century are going to depend a lot on corporations playing to local loyalties in a way not yet seen. I see a lot more future tension between globalization and xenophobia, and familiarity with the national personality might be the signal a corporate vice president needs to tip the scales in their favor.

These beliefs could be way off base. I don't think online degree programs will ever make up a large share of the higher ed market, much less replace current universities (although I think current universities will absorb a lot of techniques from these programs). So take my predictions with a grain of salt, and we'll see how I did in 2030.