Who Enters a Humanities Major?
Who Enters a Humanities Major?
According to the National Clearinghouse, almost two million students started working toward a bachelor’s degree in fall 2017; of that number, 91,751 (4.6%) selected a primary major in one of the humanities disciplines. We know from Department of Education data that an average of around 7.5% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded from 2017 to 2022 were in the humanities.2 The difference between matriculations and degrees is explained by the humanities gaining more majors from other fields than it lost to either attrition or its own students switching to another major.
Among the students in the fall 2017 cohort, 72.8% of those who started with a humanities major had completed a bachelor’s degree by summer 2024, slightly higher than the average completion rate of 70.2% among all students entering that year (Figure 1). Among the majors declared at matriculation (first entry into baccalaureate studies), the completion rates ranged from a high of 73.1% of those who declared a major in the natural sciences (a fraction of a point higher than the humanities) to a low of 67% among those who started with a major in education.
Figure 1: Completion and Attrition Among Students Starting a Bachelor’s Degree Program in Fall 2017 (Status as of Summer 2024), by Primary Major Declared in 2017
(Interactive figure at )
Slightly more than 26% of the students who declared a humanities major in fall 2017 had either dropped out or were no longer enrolled in a degree program by summer 2024. (A remaining 0.8% were still actively pursuing the degree.) This attrition rate was modestly lower than the 28.9% among all bachelor’s degree seekers (while 0.9% were still enrolled toward a degree). The highest attrition rate was found among those who started with an education major (32.0%).
This study also examined the subpopulation of students who had completed an associate’s degree before matriculation into baccalaureate studies. These students accounted for 10.5% of the entering cohort but 15.3% of the students declaring a major in the humanities. Humanities majors in this group had the highest completion rates. Just over 81% of them had completed their studies, and only 18.2% had dropped out by summer 2024. The completion rate for all matriculating students with an associate’s degree was 77.0%, with the lowest completion rate (73.6%) among those who entered engineering programs (which include computer science in our tabulations).