What Happened to the English Major?

Students Are Fleeing the Humanities. English Departments Did This to Themselves.

In my work at my college consulting firm Invictus Prep, I’ve noticed a trend among my students: no one is preparing to major in English.

Now, it might not come as a surprise that English majors—the brunt of all Starbucks barista jokes—are on the decline, but is it not strange that out of a sample size of 25, not one of my students chose to major in English—or, heck, in any humanities field?

My students have expressed interest in a diverse array of intellectual paths—from political science to chemistry—and will go on to pursue careers in law, medicine, business, tech, and engineering. But whereas in a normal societal distribution across the three major fields—STEM, the social sciences, and the humanities—we might expect about a third of students to pursue disciplines in the humanities, the numbers I see in my practice tell a completely different story. Not a single student that I coached this year expressed interest in the humanities—the field that most emphasizes learning for the sake of learning.

According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the number of humanities bachelor's degrees awarded to graduating seniors across American universities decreased by approximately 24% over ten years, dropping from 236,826 humanities degrees awarded in 2012 to 179,272 in 2022. English majors in particular are on the decline, with the University of Virginia (UVA), which houses one of the nation’s top English departments, reporting a 48% decrease in English degrees awarded since the year 2000.¹ UVA is not unique: Boston University experienced a 42% reduction in humanities majors, while Notre Dame saw a 50% decrease. On the other hand, STEM degrees are on the rise, with 30% of all awarded bachelor’s degrees now in STEM fields. While these trends might make sense in our late-capitalistic society—after all, no one wants to be stuck paying college tuition only to end up with a barista job—the general anxiety surrounding the English major points to a broader cultural shift: we—employers, students, teachers, parents, and the general populace—have devalued the humanities as a whole.

There are several factors that have contributed to this national change in priorities. On the most fundamental level, students and parents worry about job security and the return on investment of a college degree. The numbers show that humanities degrees are “risky” or impractical, with the average Columbia University English major earning $74,000 five years out of college—a number that does not seem to justify the university’s $80,000+ tuition, especially when compared to the $204,000 average salary of a computer science major. The lack of English major job security contributes to a dominant cultural narrative that fields such as tech and finance are the only “serious” or “prestigious” paths, with English being framed as soft, idealistic, or obsolete. This dynamic, in turn, prevents many English majors from being taken seriously—either interpersonally or professionally.

While these observations reveal that education is increasingly tied to output and ROI, they also prompt us to wonder how we got here. After all, earning potential is typically a reflection of societal value: the higher a society regards particular roles, the more it tends to reward people who can carry those roles out effectively. Once upon a time, after all, one could make a decent living as a journalist or a novelist—today, many writers barely scrape by, forced to juggle freelance gigs, adjunct positions, or side hustles just to stay afloat.

But as a writer who has figured out how to make a decent living, I can’t help but wonder if many English majors are doing this to themselves—and corrupting the image of the humanities intellectual in the process.

As a fierce advocate for the importance of the humanities, I vehemently believe that humanities majors are increasingly important to the fabric of society, especially in today’s AI-ridden world. In fact, if done correctly, a humanities education should teach critical thinking more robustly than any STEM or social science degree—and employers not only need but also desire critical thinkers. The problem is, however, that many English degree recipients do not aspire to such rigorous standards of intellectual thought. Therefore, the reason that English majors are virtually unemployable today is not because of the sorts of skills inherent to the degree or because it is relatively “easy” to become a strong writer (I beg to differ)—rather, it is because people majoring in English today tend to be ideologically-driven Marxists—and ideologically-driven Marxists are difficult to employ.

Given the way that humanities programs are designed today, many English majors will graduate without ever having touched Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Milton—they will, however, study fields like “Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies,” or “Genre Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, Critical Theory,” at least at UCLA. They will send texts to group chats addressing their friends as “comrades” and learn to resent the very institutions that have given them an intellectual home. The reason that the English degree has lost so much of its credibility is not because people who love literature are in any way unemployable—it is because people who receive the English major are not reading literature.

I will stand by any person who has secured a humanities degree against all odds so long as their degree reflects a commitment to the humanistic tradition of critical thinking. Today, however, when English majors participate in protests rather than read books, it is unsurprising that no serious employer wants to work with them. And who can blame them? Employers look at students who major in English and assume the worst: these students will not learn on the job. They will whine, protest, and complain—and, perhaps, call their bosses members of the evil bourgeois class in the process.² And while this particular branch of morons is off damaging the brand of the English degree, the rest of us—the serious lovers of literature who have so much intellectual wonder to contribute to society—must suffer for it.

Years ago, the great lovers of literature went into law, finance, consulting, and even medicine. Today, the ideological clowns of English departments across the country wonder why their enrollment is declining. They blame the evil capitalist machine for devaluing their fields, but capitalism is simply a reflection of the will of the people—and the people have said enough. Enough of bastardizing English literature and training terrorists on college campuses. Enough of attempting to restore the Soviet Union to its former glory. Enough of ruining your own brand—then wondering why no one wants to employ the English major. Enough of this. Let’s return to what we do best—loving literature.

I will stand from the rooftops broadcasting the importance of English literature for the rest of my existence, but, today, I regret to admit that my students are correct. Nothing good will come to them from the English degree as it currently stands—but it’s not too late to change that. As my high school seniors graduate to pursue their various fields, I hope that I may one day coach even one student who views English literature as a broader part of the humanistic tradition and chooses to study English with a level head. Only then can we show both the ideologues and the concerned parents that, when done correctly, literature is the noblest pursuit of them all.

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1. The student I placed at UVA last year exemplified this trend, originally expressing an interest in English before switching his major over to public policy for better job security. The English Department at UVA is truly missing out on this stellar writer—ths last of his kind.

2. I was the victim of such juvenile vitriol when I made the mistake of hiring a Gen Z leftist humanities major as my assistant.