[darth_avocado]

> Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened?

It costs too much and the jobs you get out of college (if you get one) are paying way too low. English has been one of the most popular majors in the last decade, but unfortunately the economy cannot meaningfully employ as many English majors. So people end up in careers that are completely unrelated. On the better side, sales and marketing jobs hire them, on the worse, a receptionist or barista. You can actually go to a trade school and come out better off on the other side.

[jmclnx]

There was a time where almost everyone majoring in liberal Arts could make a decent living. They were viewed as educated and had an open door to almost any career. I knew many liberal Art majors who ended up programming and as tech writers in the early days, never mind sales/marketing. And I am sure quite a few ended up in Business due to their learned communication skills.

Also, I had Uncles (non college) who worked selling carpets, worked in grocery stores who were able to afford a very nice life. They were able to put their children through college.

But since the early 80s, those jobs are now a race to the bottom. Now it seems you are hired only if you are pigeon holed into a specific career, and if that career path becomes obsolete, you are SOL.

[anonymouskimmer]

> I knew many liberal Art majors who ended up programming and as tech writers in the early days

In the early days no one could hire people who had degrees in these fields, because the university courses didn't exist. So they had to go further afield.

Also in these early days fewer people had college degrees. You were hiring the social (and sometimes intellectual) elite whenever you hired anyone with any degree.

[klooney]

That only worked because college was a finishing school for the well brought up (plus the occasional striver), and businesses felt comfortable just trying to hire that demographic. It doesn't work if businesses are trying to hire based on qualifications, and if half of all young workers have a college degree.

[cafard]

The only job that majoring in English remotely qualifies one for is teaching English at a school that is not bound by teacher-qualification rules. Well, maybe editing, or entry-level work in publishing. (Qualifies one for, that is, more than any randomly selected undergraduate major.)

In my day, a fair chunk of the English majors had it in mind to go to law school. A very few aspired to become professors, and some may actually have done so; but I don't remember any undergraduate peers who spoke of wanting an academic career.

[rnk]

Most of the jobs that people point to for English majors are things that any well-mannered educated person who went to college and has decent people and communication skills can do. This is not to say they are not much better educated in language, nuance, literature, much more than me. I'm a math/cs educated software engineer. They have skills I don't have. My tortured syntax here might be indicative of my terrible writing skills but I think I actually communicate reasonably well in my field.

All those english majors who could do a lot of things need more skills to get started in other fields. Partly that would be because companies are interested in more skills coming out of college. But this whole thing comes down to lack of good jobs for english majors.

Writing is a skill, but the vast huge world doesn't need so much of it, or we get along with terrible blog posts etc. The world is at a weird point, at least the western world. A lot of countries have significant labor shortages but many of these shortages don't require the education people might get in such an area in college. Plumbers, engineers, medical field.

[dml2135]

Sure but, there are plenty of jobs with the qualification of "randomly selected undergraduate major", and English is just fine for that.

[darth_avocado]

That used to be true. But more recently, universities have milked that market too. When you have students with a $200k “Masters in Photography” degree, would you consider a candidate with “randomly selected undergraduate major”?

Not saying that masters degree is any better, but from a job perspective, it is becoming increasingly harder to get a decent living wage job with random degrees.

[rnk]

I think that has been significantly decreasing over time, this is shown by the problem with them getting reasonable jobs that support them financially.

[red-iron-pine]

Are they graduating from Princeton, or even somewhere like VA Tech or UCLA? Or are they coming out of East Iowa Upstairs Liberal Arts College?

As someone that has done hiring for entry level IT gigs, there is a notable difference between a green-but-interested English major from Ohio State vs. an ITT Tech or WGU grad. I'm not just making that up: my old data center manager was an English major from OSU and a die-hard linux guy, was great. Meanwhile all of our hires who... got DUIs, got fired for sexual harassment, caused 3 hour outages, and ended up involuntarily committed in mental hospitals, were no-degree or dubious-online-degree holders (these were all different people, btw).

You really saw the difference when it came to independent tasks and higher-level stuff, like running projects or management roles. Knew plenty of folks who were amazing and only had an AA (or less), but they were exceptions to the rule when compared to the ones who were sub-par.

[jwestbury]

When I've been involved in entry-level hiring, I nearly always push to hire candidates who exhibit some fundamental, non-domain-specific skills.

A question I used to like was asking someone to help me troubleshoot an everyday object that isn't working. Help me figure out why my toaster isn't working. Help me take apart a ballpoint pen and put it back together.

If you can answer those questions well, and you have a pretty basic level of knowledge, a desire to learn, and good soft skills, I'd much prefer to hire you over someone who's got great tech knowledge but mediocre troubleshooting skills and soft skills.

[rnk]

That's an interesting point, I like the idea, but I don't see that it would apply to even well prepared English majors. I just don't expect them to understand how to troubleshoot a toaster. They probably think of plugging it in and seeing if the outlet is working. Did I check if the cord is frayed, if the button that starts it is out, and then is there something wrong inside? I just don't see an English major doing those next steps. And again, I have great respect for their skills. But everyone has a limit. But if I had a chance to hire a software engineer who had experience, let's say working in construction then I think they'd understand some things that would be more applicable.