Why the lack of men majoring in humanities?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I want to build a nuclear bomb, I’ll hire scientists.

If I want to hire someone to run my country, I’ll hire somebody with vast historical knowledge, global policy-wise, and a critical thinker with ethics that doesn’t crack under pressure.

The right man/woman for the right job.

I tapped out salary-wise as an engineer (MS too). My husband with just a BA from a T10 was making $300k 3 years out of college (in the mid 90s) and avg $400-500k to my $250k.

Plenty of STEM undergrads go work at hedge funds or in finance and make a ton.

I assume your husband wasn’t making $300k as say a historian in the mid-90s.

There was absolutely nothing stopping you from going down a different path, but you did at least have the option to make a nice living in your direct field of study.

[Anonymous]

While some here are criticizing the humanities, remember that most of their teachers—the people responsible for developing their thinking skills for the high paying careers—studied social sciences or humanities fields in undergrad. This is true even of STEMlords.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While some here are criticizing the humanities, remember that most of their teachers—the people responsible for developing their thinking skills for the high paying careers—studied social sciences or humanities fields in undergrad. This is true even of STEMlords.

You're making some broad assumptions here.

Speaking of the decline in the humanities among men (and it's not just men, as fewer women are majoring in the humanities too), out of curiosity I glanced at the current history curriculum at Swarthmore: https://www.swarthmore.edu/history/current-courses

It's intriguing, to say the least. However your feelings on these courses, this would not have been the typical history department course offerings of 1990 or 1995 or 2000 or even 2005, when most of us adults on here would have been in college and browsing the course catalogues. I can also verify it's nothing like what my Ivy history department offered in the late 1990s into the 2000s. There are clear themes dominating the Swarthmore offerings in 2025 and I see why few young males would be interested in majoring in history. You'd have to be a particular type of student, either male or female, to be interested in these courses. You can also openly wonder if these courses are really a serious study of history or just something faddish, it's dominated by identity politics and one can be skeptical of any "rigor" being applied in these courses.

The teachers referred to in your post would have been educated under an older and different approach to studying humanities. Your claim doesn't hold up well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've had a son and daughter at good single sex schools. The all-boys school emphasized professionalism and career prospects. Many of its graduates selected engineering, CS, and econ as prospective majors.

For the all-women's school there was much more emphasis on self-discovery and self-care, not on professional skills. And it was a progressive women's high school.

I think we're still socializing our children of different genders very differently.

Society is downstream of genetics. While society does influence behavior, much of this is innate in the sexes. They’ve done studies with primates and stereotypically male/female toys and the primates exhibited the same sex bias towards toys that human children do. Society is generally structured to fit these biological realities. You’ll definitely find individual exceptions, but with large numbers the patterns are clear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While some here are criticizing the humanities, remember that most of their teachers—the people responsible for developing their thinking skills for the high paying careers—studied social sciences or humanities fields in undergrad. This is true even of STEMlords.

You're making some broad assumptions here.

Speaking of the decline in the humanities among men (and it's not just men, as fewer women are majoring in the humanities too), out of curiosity I glanced at the current history curriculum at Swarthmore: https://www.swarthmore.edu/history/current-courses

It's intriguing, to say the least. However your feelings on these courses, this would not have been the typical history department course offerings of 1990 or 1995 or 2000 or even 2005, when most of us adults on here would have been in college and browsing the course catalogues. I can also verify it's nothing like what my Ivy history department offered in the late 1990s into the 2000s. There are clear themes dominating the Swarthmore offerings in 2025 and I see why few young males would be interested in majoring in history. You'd have to be a particular type of student, either male or female, to be interested in these courses. You can also openly wonder if these courses are really a serious study of history or just something faddish, it's dominated by identity politics and one can be skeptical of any "rigor" being applied in these courses.

The teachers referred to in your post would have been educated under an older and different approach to studying humanities. Your claim doesn't hold up well.

DP. I see what you see in that catalog, but a kid with common sense could pick out a pretty normal history education. Of course who knows what lens is used in the normal-seeming courses.

Speaking as a liberal, it’s remarkable how extensive the rot is in the humanities. I wish we had been better at curating this ourselves. Now it will be done for us, and of course at the expense of most of our medical research as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just looked through the ‘25 class decisions for a local school on Instagram. Of 13 humanities majors, only 2 are male. Anyone else see this? This must mean that men get a bump.

Because unlike women, guys need to worry about feeding their family later on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Boys are raised with the social expectation that they need to support their family. (And yes this is related to attracting a mate.) Girls are not. The question for me is why are there so many girls still attracted to the humanities, despite the economics? What aren’t we teaching them?

None of this is to suggest that the humanities should not be taught, even required. But I do think that girls excuse themselves from thinking through the economic implications of majoring in humanities in a way that boys do not. And that’s our fault.

After years of seeing programs promoting STEM and Engineering to girls I was shocked to that my DS's 30 person mathcounts club at MS had 4 girls, 0 of the girls made the team. When we went to State this year, I think there were 2 girls in the top 12.

I have no idea why we have not been able to break through this barrier with girls and STEM topics but the disparity in numbers in my sons Advanced Math class in ES, Algebra 1 in 7th grade, his math competition class, and at Mathcounts points to a continuation of the notion that boys are better at math or belong in math. I have no idea why this continues, I would have expected things to strat balancing out more but it hasn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boys are raised with the social expectation that they need to support their family. (And yes this is related to attracting a mate.) Girls are not. The question for me is why are there so many girls still attracted to the humanities, despite the economics? What aren’t we teaching them?

None of this is to suggest that the humanities should not be taught, even required. But I do think that girls excuse themselves from thinking through the economic implications of majoring in humanities in a way that boys do not. And that’s our fault.

After years of seeing programs promoting STEM and Engineering to girls I was shocked to that my DS's 30 person mathcounts club at MS had 4 girls, 0 of the girls made the team. When we went to State this year, I think there were 2 girls in the top 12.

I have no idea why we have not been able to break through this barrier with girls and STEM topics but the disparity in numbers in my sons Advanced Math class in ES, Algebra 1 in 7th grade, his math competition class, and at Mathcounts points to a continuation of the notion that boys are better at math or belong in math. I have no idea why this continues, I would have expected things to strat balancing out more but it hasn't.

Brain differences. Some women genetically have that type of “male brain” and excel in STEM.

It’s not just a matter of exposing kids to STEM early, nature vs nurture.

It’s like music ability. Some people will never play the piano well, etc. They have zero ear for music.

This isn’t sexist or racist (I’m a woman in STEM, btw). More men are left brained. With CS and engineering there has been a link to autism traits as well.

There is much more going on than people appreciate.

You also find more women in microbiology, immunology, genetics, etc (the less mathematical/engineering type of STEM).

[Anonymous]

^ speed is similar….people can train and train and train …but genetically will never be incredibly fast like others (sure they can improve their own times- but there is a cutoff they can’t break).

Some are fantastic learning new languages, others are not no matter how much exposure.

We want everything to be equal- but it’s not. It’s why women’s sports can’t play men’s professional teams and excel. There are biological/genetic differences/testosterone differences, weight/height, etc

[Anonymous]

People want robots.

You get rid of the arts and humanities and critical thinking and ethics and history…you get the world we are seeing.

You get the machine vs the climate.
You get no humanity.

The world needs both. The human needs to know when the robots turn bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While some here are criticizing the humanities, remember that most of their teachers—the people responsible for developing their thinking skills for the high paying careers—studied social sciences or humanities fields in undergrad. This is true even of STEMlords.

You're making some broad assumptions here.

Speaking of the decline in the humanities among men (and it's not just men, as fewer women are majoring in the humanities too), out of curiosity I glanced at the current history curriculum at Swarthmore: https://www.swarthmore.edu/history/current-courses

It's intriguing, to say the least. However your feelings on these courses, this would not have been the typical history department course offerings of 1990 or 1995 or 2000 or even 2005, when most of us adults on here would have been in college and browsing the course catalogues. I can also verify it's nothing like what my Ivy history department offered in the late 1990s into the 2000s. There are clear themes dominating the Swarthmore offerings in 2025 and I see why few young males would be interested in majoring in history. You'd have to be a particular type of student, either male or female, to be interested in these courses. You can also openly wonder if these courses are really a serious study of history or just something faddish, it's dominated by identity politics and one can be skeptical of any "rigor" being applied in these courses.

The teachers referred to in your post would have been educated under an older and different approach to studying humanities. Your claim doesn't hold up well.

DP. I see what you see in that catalog, but a kid with common sense could pick out a pretty normal history education. Of course who knows what lens is used in the normal-seeming courses.

Speaking as a liberal, it’s remarkable how extensive the rot is in the humanities. I wish we had been better at curating this ourselves. Now it will be done for us, and of course at the expense of most of our medical research as well.

Plus history is a majority male major (as is philosophy). Not all humanities are alike…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While some here are criticizing the humanities, remember that most of their teachers—the people responsible for developing their thinking skills for the high paying careers—studied social sciences or humanities fields in undergrad. This is true even of STEMlords.

You're making some broad assumptions here.

Speaking of the decline in the humanities among men (and it's not just men, as fewer women are majoring in the humanities too), out of curiosity I glanced at the current history curriculum at Swarthmore: https://www.swarthmore.edu/history/current-courses

It's intriguing, to say the least. However your feelings on these courses, this would not have been the typical history department course offerings of 1990 or 1995 or 2000 or even 2005, when most of us adults on here would have been in college and browsing the course catalogues. I can also verify it's nothing like what my Ivy history department offered in the late 1990s into the 2000s. There are clear themes dominating the Swarthmore offerings in 2025 and I see why few young males would be interested in majoring in history. You'd have to be a particular type of student, either male or female, to be interested in these courses. You can also openly wonder if these courses are really a serious study of history or just something faddish, it's dominated by identity politics and one can be skeptical of any "rigor" being applied in these courses.

The teachers referred to in your post would have been educated under an older and different approach to studying humanities. Your claim doesn't hold up well.

NP. That's a different course selection than I got a a history major twenty years ago (although it's also a small department, which means it's going to have a tighter focus), but it's also a majority male faculty at a school that (looking as the past few years) generally graduates more men than women who major in history. That doesn't actually seem to be the factor, at least for history.

(I also don't think it's less rigorous than what I go, even if it's not what I'm interested in, but that's probably a conversation for another day)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While some here are criticizing the humanities, remember that most of their teachers—the people responsible for developing their thinking skills for the high paying careers—studied social sciences or humanities fields in undergrad. This is true even of STEMlords.

You're making some broad assumptions here.

Speaking of the decline in the humanities among men (and it's not just men, as fewer women are majoring in the humanities too), out of curiosity I glanced at the current history curriculum at Swarthmore: https://www.swarthmore.edu/history/current-courses

It's intriguing, to say the least. However your feelings on these courses, this would not have been the typical history department course offerings of 1990 or 1995 or 2000 or even 2005, when most of us adults on here would have been in college and browsing the course catalogues. I can also verify it's nothing like what my Ivy history department offered in the late 1990s into the 2000s. There are clear themes dominating the Swarthmore offerings in 2025 and I see why few young males would be interested in majoring in history. You'd have to be a particular type of student, either male or female, to be interested in these courses. You can also openly wonder if these courses are really a serious study of history or just something faddish, it's dominated by identity politics and one can be skeptical of any "rigor" being applied in these courses.

The teachers referred to in your post would have been educated under an older and different approach to studying humanities. Your claim doesn't hold up well.

I was a policy major, and I’d take these classes right now, in a heartbeat:

Digging through the NatSec archive?! Yes, please:

https://catalog.swarthmore.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=30&coid=97909

“Analyz[ing] experiments and schemes for organizing the world, ranging from realized projects like the League of Nations and the World Health Organization to unrealized projects like the European Defense Community”?? YES!!

https://catalog.swarthmore.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=30&coid=99249

Leviathan and the Inquisition = awesome!

https://catalog.swarthmore.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=30&coid=99688

Cities and Social Movements? Classic history course!

https://catalog.swarthmore.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=30&coid=99991

[Anonymous]

We also have a shortage of male teachers in our elementary school all the way to high school. Many male teachers are men retired from other professions. Very few career male teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many lawyers make a good living with their humanities degrees.

Correction: Many lawyers make a good living with their law degrees.