The Death of the English Major

The Future of Higher Ed

An inevitable headline. But what happened?

I’ve previously written multiple essays (and then not published them) on my frustrations with the current state of Higher Education. Don’t get me wrong—I love academia. I love academics. I love intellectuals. I’m pro-education.

Something has been wrong with our approach to Higher Ed since… well, as long as I’ve been around.

We’ve all watched the price of tuition jump year after year until reaching truly obscene levels that are unaffordable for even middle-upper Middle Class families. This alone suggests it’s become even more difficult in recent years for a person to be the first in their family to graduate from college.

I’ve seen many charts, and read many articles, over the past decade or so showing the decline of humanities majors as well as the income that tends to be generated from other majors (often STEM or STEM-adjacent).

This recent chart is dark— showing a net negative ROI (return on investment) for Liberal Arts, Religious Studies, Theater, Communications…

“With a negative ROI of about $39,000, English language programs have also experienced the greatest decrease in graduates, with 32% fewer students completing these programs compared to 10 years prior.”

Also, some less predictable majors that involve human services, jobs in social work, veteran’s services, child support services, and community relations.

I’m partly surprised to see that psychology degrees do not necessarily pay off when it’s well-known that there are not enough counselors to handle our ever-growing mental health crisis. Of course, the people who need the most help are often not in a position to pay. Therapists have told me it’s a difficult internal dilemma to consider the kind of practice and conditions they are willing and able to work in.

That aforementioned negative return on ROI is, I’m sad to say, personally relevant. I’ll admit, I didn’t go to school with a goal to “make money”. In my defense, I don’t think many 18-year-olds are in the position of making these sorts of life-changing decisions without having a solid understanding of what they are undertaking. I’m part of the generation told a false promise that it didn’t really matter what your major was so long as you graduated. Now, we know a little better.

But here’s the thing— my English degree was valuable. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it. When asked about the education received at my undergrad institution, I’ve long said that Albright College allowed for a situation where you could choose to get a good education, but you could also slide by learning very little. I watched it go both ways. I studied hard (because I’m no genius) and, still, in hindsight, it felt like there were a lot of “Easy As”. Grade inflation has been a thing for a while now. Further, I believe there may have been a desire to prop up the good students who also put in the effort.

College is a lot of things, right? I certainly did not experience the full range of what is on offer when I was there. Much later, I would see kids go about college in a totally different way and I was a bit jealous. Of course, you have to remember the person you were at that age… some things you’d do similarly even if you had a chance for a do over.

I like when people ask me what I think I would have majored in if I attended college today. I have often said behavioral economics (though any serious math requirements would be my downfall) or social psychology. In recent times, I’ve been surprised by the fascinating work being done in the anthropology and sociology fields. In college, had quite a lot of philosophy credits though didn’t feel the need to do the capstone class to have a dual major (English / Philosophy). I also didn’t want to bother with the capstone for Art History since, even at that time, I was well aware that an Art History degree wasn’t getting me anywhere practical. I did greatly enjoy those classes, I want to note. As an aside, Art History was only offered as a “Concentration” at Albright which, at the time at least, was their vague concept of a “Minor”.

Something neat that Albright was just getting underway was an interdisciplinary class requirement. This was a class taught by four professors from four different departments. Every week, a different professor would take the lead. This week on in four week cycles over the course of the semester. For the class I took, the professors were from the philosophy, English, physics, and history departments. It was one of the most memorable and powerful classes I took during my time in undergrad and I still remember at least some of the curriculum details and takeaways 20 years later.

The great thing about being an English Major is exposure. You read vast numbers of books and have wide open days to consume them. It was, frankly, more reading than I was really capable of fully keeping up with… that being said, I’m nostalgic for that level of freedom before I understood anything about the weight of adult responsibilities… and I was not yet fully aware of the direction my life would take… which meant I could enjoy a lot of this intellectual freedom while it lasted.

Full immersion in literature is a beautiful thing. It’s particularly cool while the mind is malleable at conventional college age. You’re definitely still in “Sponge Mode”. The most fun was probably in philosophy classes. (Philosophy and film, a 3-hour night class, was particularly memorable.) Philosophy class, in my experience, was where the real intellectual sparring was going down.

I don’t regret, but I also have mixed feelings about, how deep I went with lit theory. All those texts on structuralism and post-structuralism…

I certainly don’t regret getting heavily into feminism. Though, I went far enough to become kinda self-hating for a bit… which was not healthy.

My teenage interest in film became an area of more serious study for a time. So, too, did photography (at least to an extent). Albright allowed honor’s students to design their own course for a semester with a mentor and, for my self-guided class, I chose to focus on the Beats… mostly to learn that the Beats were really a minor footnote in the history of poetry. Trust me on this one.

All of this to say…what exactly?

I don’t want to see the English Major tossed out with the bath water. It’s a mistake.

That being said, we most definitely need to revamp majors—especially humanities majors. So, too, majors that have proven to have negative or low ROI for students.

I’m sure all the folks I know you teach will happily tell you the things they believe students should not be allowed to graduate college without knowing. We do need to develop skills and knowledge requirements that are more likely to guarantee a better life for students.

I’m wondering now how much Core Curriculum has shifted since I was in college. Evidence suggests it’s not drastic enough.

Students need to graduate college with a fair shot in a rapidly changing job market, uncertain economies, and ever-shifting landscape.

Years ago, it was projected that Millennials should expect three major career shifts during their lifetime. I expect the number could be more for Gen Z. On the flipside, it looks like Gen Z learned from the mistakes of Millennials and have leaned in the direction of taking up trades. A wise decision.

A two-year trade school program that positions you in an apprenticeship for a job with real-world application that is unlikely to become outmoded or taken over by robots or made obsolete by artificial intelligence is smart. A person who chooses trade school may be able to stay in their lane, give or take, for 25 years.

The people in the most trouble seem to be “knowledge workers”. Jobs became “tasks” and full-time work became temp contracts and gig economy hustle.

Where do we go from here?

What am I missing?

What else can we do to improve the likelihood that college graduates will be prepared for “the real world” and hit the ground running as they enter the job market?

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Bonus Reading for Extra Credit

~ ~ ~ Below are Selections from Essay Drafts ~ ~ ~ 

>>> Note: I’m sharing these as a conversation starter. I’m making no claims that I have all the answers— only questions, and more questions.

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The Trouble with College

An Introductory Note

A while ago… I almost posted this… and then did not… because who am I? I’m not an insider. I’m not a subject matter expert when it comes to the interworkings of academia and large institutional investment strategies.

But anyways… here goes…

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) “estimates that college-goers are now forking out 1246% more than their predecessors were in 1980 — and that’s just on tuition fees. Textbooks, materials and other educational supplies have also soared 949% since then. Both are way ahead of overall inflation, which has climbed a relatively modest 285% over the same period.”

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A student loan crisis is coming from the next generation of teenagers doing cost/benefit analysis of going to college. Who are we kidding!? Teenagers don’t do this. Teenagers are ill-equipped to have the social/emotional savviness to make wise decisions about their economic future 20 years down the road.

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We need a massive overhaul to the system.

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We need to normalize attending community college for education and acknowledge that many four-year institutions are for rich kids to party and nerdy kids to try on a new identity and learn about sex.

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Two-year Associate’s degrees should be enough for most jobs.

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A Master’s degree should not be required for many positions, including some of those in academia (hello, adjuncts), and a PhD should be reserved for those who are doing something niche.

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Trade school is a sensible idea for many people. Not everyone wants a desk job.

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How Would You Envision a Better Higher Ed System?

Put another way – What would Higher Ed reform look like for you?

“Of the 4,360 higher education institutions in the U.S., 2,832 are four-year colleges and 1,582 are two-year colleges. According to the latest data from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), there is a total of 1,050 community colleges in the U.S.” (Research.com)

In 2020, Statista claims we had 3,931 institutions— a decrease from 4,583 in 2015.

I thought there were 6,800 (probably because I read misinformation somewhere). I had a conversation the other day in which I was corrected (incorrectly it seems) and told we have about 8,000 higher ed institutions.

We know many will shutter or consolidate in the coming years. This isn’t surprising and it hasn’t snuck up on society. We should be more prepared.

How many large Higher Ed institutions are logical across the country? Which should survive and for what purposes?

How much of this is signaling? How much is related to class and privilege and status? How much is about certification as opposed to education?

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A thought experiment—

Who might be better off directly entering the workforce after high school and putting their college fund directly into relatively safe investments (such as an S&P 500 ETF).

Please keep in mind this is not financial advice. This is armchair philosophy.

The S&P 500 averages around 10% return on investment (ROI) year over year (YoY). In 10 years, a $60,000 investment could theoretically become $600,000. Meanwhile, you could have spent that time working at Trader Joe’s (yay, Trader Joe’s!) (Note: I realize there are other issues at hand here, including the importance of learning to overcome obstacles. Not that working at Trader Joe’s doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about life in “the real world”… rather that sitting on a large investment while doing the same thing day after day for a decade and not learning new skills is not ideal. Aspects of my desk job at the detective agency fell into some of these same traps. I’ll spare you my rant on embracing Emerson’s “American Scholar” concept… partly because it’s not the answer to all of life’s problems.)

October 2024 update: Goldman Sachs is predicting the S&P 500 may be peaking and only yields returns of a mere 3% over the next decade. The reality? No one knows for sure.

Moving along…

If an 18-year-old kid is somehow already in entrepreneur mode, they could take the money that would have been spent on college and start a business. Maybe? Not recommended for your average 18-year-old.

My point, which is hopefully clear by now, is there are alternative options to the traditional 4-year college degree.

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Outshot. A fun story.

Can’t stop, won’t stop… learning?

‘The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Going to College: Benjamin B. Bolger has spent his whole life amassing academic degrees. What can we learn from him?’ (New York Times Magazine)

“Nothing you learn at an elite university is as important as the line on your C.V. that you’ve paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to type.”

“Many of us love learning, too, but we don’t do what Bolger has done; we listen to history podcasts on our commutes or pick our way through long books in the minutes before sleep. Despite all his degrees, Bolger has never sought a tenure-track job — only a few of his degrees would even qualify him for such a position — and he has never really specialized.”

Cheers to being absurdly overeducated.

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