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Movement Between Majors

One of the primary goals of this study was to determine how much migration between majors occurred from matriculation to completion. Figure 2 shows the movement of students from the time they matriculated into baccalaureate studies to their status as of summer 2024 (on the right). This shows the shares of students who left their studies without a degree (28.9% of the original cohort of students), were still enrolled toward a degree (almost 1%), had earned a degree in the humanities (5.6%), or had completed a degree in a nonhumanities field (64.6%).

Figure 2: Noncompletion and Change of Major Among Bachelor’s Degree Seekers, from Matriculation (in Fall 2017) to Summer 2024, by Primary Major Declared at Matriculation

(Interactive chart at )

Of the almost 92,000 students who began their studies with a major in the humanities, 49,808 (54%) finished with a degree in the humanities. This was slightly below the rates at which students completed their degree in their original major in other fields, including in engineering (58%) and business (57%), but similar to the rates for students starting in the arts, social and behavioral sciences, and health and medical sciences. The humanities’ rate was substantially higher than that of education or the natural sciences (both around 46%).

If one excludes the students who dropped out of their studies, approximately 8.0% of the students from the fall 2017 cohort who graduated (111,437) did so with a primary degree in the humanities. This was up substantially from the 4.6% of the entering cohort who declared a humanities major, due to 61,628 students migrating into the humanities from a different major. As a result, even though the humanities lost a substantial portion of the students who started in its programs—due either to attrition or a change of major—the field gained a much larger number of students who switched over from other majors. Indeed, only the humanities and the behavioral/social sciences had a net increase in the number of students from matriculation to graduation. As a result, 55% of the students who earned a degree in the humanities had entered college intending to major in another subject.

As Figure 2 also shows, an exceptionally large number of students declared (or were assigned to) a general liberal arts major upon entering their studies.3 (A question for future study might be whether the general liberal arts category is now serving as a substitute for what were once classified as “undeclared” students, whose numbers were quite small in this cohort.) Most of those students switched to another major before they graduated. Despite the apparent proximity to the humanities (past research by the Humanities Indicators staff found that these fields generally require a substantial amount of coursework in humanities subjects prior to graduation), only a small portion of these students migrated over to the field, while most of them moved to nonhumanities fields. Nevertheless, the largest source of students who switched into one of the humanities disciplines was from the general liberal arts, as 11.6% of degree completers who initially declared in that category finished with a major in the humanities, accounting for 25% of the students who finished with a humanities degrees and almost half of the migrants into humanities from other fields.

The students with an associate’s degree were much less likely to begin their baccalaureate program with a major in general liberal arts and substantially more likely to declare a major in one of the humanities disciplines at matriculation. Only 5.6% of those with an associate’s degree started with a major in the general liberal arts (compared to 17.1% among all matriculating students), and 6.7% of the students who started their studies with an associate’s degree declared a humanities major upon matriculation (a share almost half again as large as that of all students who began undergraduate studies in 2017). This suggests the importance of the early years of study—when students are taking general education requirements—as a period of sorting and reassessment of the initial major, but merits further study.4 This study did not collect any further information about when the movement between majors had occurred.

Figure 3 shows how many students who completed a degree (at any point in the intervening seven years) remained in the same broad field of study at graduation or had switched to another field. Sizable majorities of the students who started in every field except general liberal arts finished a degree in the same field. Among the students who started with a major in a humanities discipline and completed a degree, 74.5% finished with a primary degree in the humanities. This was similar to students who started in the social/behavioral sciences, the health/medical sciences, and the fine and performing arts but modestly lower than the share among graduates who started in business and management (82.8%) and engineering (80.4%). The natural sciences had a comparatively small share stick with the field to the end (just 64%).

Figure 3: Primary Field of Degree, by Primary Major Declared at Matriculation (Fall 2017 Cohort, Status as of Summer 2023)

(Interactive version at )

The fields differed substantially in where students who left the major wound up. Degree completers who started in the humanities were most likely to move to either one of the smaller vocational subjects lumped under the “Other” category (accounting for 7.4% of the students who started in the humanities and completed a degree) or the social and behavioral sciences (6.7%). The social and behavioral sciences also had a substantial portion of their students move on to subjects in the Other category (6.6%), but the second-largest movement was to the humanities (4.8%).

A related question concerns the extent of outmigration from the individual humanities disciplines. (For this analysis, both first and second majors at matriculation and graduation were considered, with a student counted in each discipline for which they had declared a major.) As Figure 4 demonstrates, substantial differences in retention rate were observed among the disciplines.

Figure 4: Retention Rates Among Degree Completers Who Matriculated With a Primary Major in the Humanities, by Discipline (Fall 2017 Cohort, Status as of Summer 2023)

(Interactive version at )

The three largest disciplines in the humanities (communication, English, and history) had the highest retention rates, with slightly more than 70% of degree completers who started out in the discipline graduating with a degree (either first or second) in that same discipline. Except for area studies, all the remaining humanities disciplines had retention rates ranging from 52% to 65%. Area studies was the only discipline in which less than half of degree completers (47%) who started in the discipline graduated with a degree in it.

Most degree completers who left their original humanities discipline left the humanities field entirely. The most extreme example of this was in communication, where 87% of the completers who moved away from the discipline earned a degree in a nonhumanities field instead. Even for disciplines considered to be in the traditional core of the field (the languages, history, and philosophy), more than two-thirds of completers who left the subject also left the field.

If one reverses the perspective and looks at where the students who completed a degree in each of the fields originated, the extent of the movement between fields becomes more apparent. Just 44.7% of the students completing degrees in the humanities had started their studies with a major in one of the disciplines, as more than half of the graduates started in another subject area—the lowest share of any field.

Comparing Figure 3 and Figure 5 highlights not only the success of the humanities in retaining students who started in the field but also its ability to attract students from other fields. In addition to the sizable percentage of humanities graduates who started out with general liberal arts majors, 5% migrated from each of the following fields: social and behavioral sciences, business and management, the natural sciences, and “Other.” If one excludes the general liberal arts, the humanities drew the largest share of its graduates from other fields, though the behavioral/social sciences were a close second.

Figure 5: Primary Field of Major Declared at Matriculation, by Primary Field of Degree (Fall 2017 Cohort, Status as of Summer 2023)

(Interactive chart at )

In comparison to the humanities and social/behavioral sciences, the natural sciences stand out both for a lower retention rate among students starting in the field and a comparatively small amount of in-migration from other fields. This study was not designed to explore the reasons for these differences, only to surface the underlying patterns of movement between the fields, but these data point to a subject for further study. For instance, while some discussion in the media points to the humanities as “easy” majors that a student might retreat to, other survey research notes that faculty in the humanities and social sciences do a much better job of mentoring and supporting their students, thereby attracting more of them into their subjects.5