Is it low brow to criticize humanities majors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m wondering if criticizing humanities majors is a more cultural thing. I’m an immigrant, and humanities majors are definitely looked down upon as there aren’t much career prospects in my home country for them as there would be for an engineer or a doctor for instance.
Also, as a high school student in my home country, it’s almost unheard of to go into a humanities major if you’re good at Math/ STEM.
It’s awesome to see kids in the US who are good at STEM, deliberately choose humanities majors and thrive.

I think that’s only immigrants from Asian countries. How could everybody be an engineer or doctor? That would be weird.

Not everyone is an engineer or a doctor. Most people are poor. Other people are business people who don't need a college education.

NP here. Wow this thread is something.

As a 2nd gen Indian American, I don’t want my kids to be engineers or doctors. Those are vocational careers (yes, half my family did that and they all regret not studying other things).

I want them to have the freedom to study whatever they want. To read as much as they want. And they are at their Ivies as humanities majors. Older one has a IB internship lined up as a history/comparative lit major.

NP- Another 2nd gen Indian poster here. I was happy when my kid expressed an interest in taking philosophy classes and encouraged them to be open-minded about career paths- academia, consulting, government. The worst is when kids feel stuck or locked into something and then have major regrets as older adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

My experience is that the same person who is educated, wealthy and well spoken is quite congratulatory of someone studying history at Harvard, but has no problem telling the history major at Salisbury "have fun working at Starbucks".

Well yes, but as a history major from a low end state school, they aren’t wrong. It’s a dead end. My classmates I know about work as cashiers or customer service, or went on to law school. That’s OK…for many people a degree is a degree, but it wasn’t ever leading to a career in history.

As with most "non stem degrees", those who want to go further have to have a plan. Nobody is just sitting there asking for "someone with a BA in History". You have to find what you want to do, get your foot in the door (internships, etc) and create a path for yourself. But you should know that from the start of college.
And the stem people who go furthest are the ones motivated to create the "best path" for themselves as well. It's just easier to still get a job without that highly motivated position

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m wondering if criticizing humanities majors is a more cultural thing. I’m an immigrant, and humanities majors are definitely looked down upon as there aren’t much career prospects in my home country for them as there would be for an engineer or a doctor for instance.
Also, as a high school student in my home country, it’s almost unheard of to go into a humanities major if you’re good at Math/ STEM.
It’s awesome to see kids in the US who are good at STEM, deliberately choose humanities majors and thrive.

I think that’s only immigrants from Asian countries. How could everybody be an engineer or doctor? That would be weird.

Years ago, my Japanese American friend from law school said that all of her cousins were doctors. I was amazed.

[Anonymous]

Of course it’s wrong to criticize anyone for choosing to be a humanities major in 2025. But I think there’s a general sense among 18 year olds today that it’s not going to be easy to forge a good life in the decades ahead.

Which is a very different sensibility than when most parents were going to college. We were perfectly happy to major in English or History or International Relations bc we had some confidence things were going to work out. And mostly they did.

But that confidence doesn’t exist anymore. So many smart students are all gravitating to the same majors - engineering, pre-med, business. CS may be dropping off now, but that’s going to make engineering even more competitive.

I think kids are scared - not unreasonably - about the future. So when a bright kid chooses Classical Studies or Art History in this climate, others assume they have generational wealth or they’re nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a luxury to be able to study whatever you are passionate about for learnings sake without having to care about employment outcomes.

My daughter is in NYC with thousands of kids studying dance, acting, musical theatre at places like NYU, Juilliard, Fordham with Alvin Ailey, all the schools at the top ballet companies. That’s just a few of the schools.

It’s not that unusual for these kids to study something without knowing what kind on income they might have.

Years ago I roomed with a woman who had a SUNY dance degree. Her source of income was as an admin via temp agency. She lamented her dance degree. Another woman at a party who was also a dancer lamented that nobody was interested in her dancing but liked her cheesecakes.

In NYC the top dance school is SAB which is a children's professional program. NYU, Juilliard and Fordham don't produce dancers who can actually make a living from dancing. And most of the musicians and actors from those schools end up as real estate agents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a luxury to be able to study whatever you are passionate about for learnings sake without having to care about employment outcomes.

My daughter is in NYC with thousands of kids studying dance, acting, musical theatre at places like NYU, Juilliard, Fordham with Alvin Ailey, all the schools at the top ballet companies. That’s just a few of the schools.

It’s not that unusual for these kids to study something without knowing what kind on income they might have.

Years ago I roomed with a woman who had a SUNY dance degree. Her source of income was as an admin via temp agency. She lamented her dance degree. Another woman at a party who was also a dancer lamented that nobody was interested in her dancing but liked her cheesecakes.

In NYC the top dance school is SAB which is a children's professional program. NYU, Juilliard and Fordham don't produce dancers who can actually make a living from dancing. And most of the musicians and actors from those schools end up as real estate agents.

Dance isn't really humanities, its ARTS.
Humanities: History, Politics, Literature, Languages etc
Arts: Theater, Dance, Sculpture, etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can only major in these sorts of things if you are at at "good" school...bc the career services/alumni/name help with that consulting/PR/comms/advisory job.....

- T10 humanities major who makes a healthy 7 figures a year

Agree. We are full pay at the Ivies for my kids. If they were stem we would have just done a state school. To get into an Ivy- you also excelled in AP calc/physics/chem, etc in addition to AP foreign language/histories/eng lang lit. You have to have it all to get in anyways.

Harvard's remedial calculus class says this isn't true.

Harvard isn’t MIT. You do not have to excel in AP Calc

[Anonymous]

For what it is worth my father's BA was sociology. Then he got an MA in history. Then a JD. Then an LLM. Became a judge.

Between enrolling in a college you have NEVER heard of, and becoming a judge, he held such "low brow" jobs as day laborer, farm hand, and infantryman. Two wartime deployments.

Go ahead and tease sociology majors all you want. They'll be living their life regardless of what you think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For what it is worth my father's BA was sociology. Then he got an MA in history. Then a JD. Then an LLM. Became a judge.

Between enrolling in a college you have NEVER heard of, and becoming a judge, he held such "low brow" jobs as day laborer, farm hand, and infantryman. Two wartime deployments.

Go ahead and tease sociology majors all you want. They'll be living their life regardless of what you think.

I'm sure those experiences made him a good judge. But most young people today don't have access to all the money it takes to get multiple degrees. Boomers lived in a different time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

I mean, those people are just projecting their insecurities. The joke’s on them because humanities majors are best positioned to thrive in an AI-disrupted economy. Human creativity is going to command a premium in the workplace. It is already true.

Humanities majors aren't human creativity. They are spectators to human creativity.

But enjoy coping. While English majors get replaced by ChatGPT writing marketing copy.

Humanities majors learn to think. That's what reading, analyzing, and presenting and defending your analyses in discussions, presentations and in writing does. You get a broad based education and learn to think deeply and communicate.

English majors don't just write. They think. That's why their skills are so valuable in so many fields.

Do you think CS/eng majors don't "think"? LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a luxury to be able to study whatever you are passionate about for learnings sake without having to care about employment outcomes.

My daughter is in NYC with thousands of kids studying dance, acting, musical theatre at places like NYU, Juilliard, Fordham with Alvin Ailey, all the schools at the top ballet companies. That’s just a few of the schools.

It’s not that unusual for these kids to study something without knowing what kind on income they might have.

Years ago I roomed with a woman who had a SUNY dance degree. Her source of income was as an admin via temp agency. She lamented her dance degree. Another woman at a party who was also a dancer lamented that nobody was interested in her dancing but liked her cheesecakes.

In NYC the top dance school is SAB which is a children's professional program. NYU, Juilliard and Fordham don't produce dancers who can actually make a living from dancing. And most of the musicians and actors from those schools end up as real estate agents.

My DD would love to major in musical theater, but we don't have family money, so she needs to major in something where she can be financially independent. There's no Bank of Mommy and Daddy here to fund her passion.

She is going to minor it, though, and I'm supportive of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For what it is worth my father's BA was sociology. Then he got an MA in history. Then a JD. Then an LLM. Became a judge.

Between enrolling in a college you have NEVER heard of, and becoming a judge, he held such "low brow" jobs as day laborer, farm hand, and infantryman. Two wartime deployments.

Go ahead and tease sociology majors all you want. They'll be living their life regardless of what you think.

This is key. Most humanities majors require a graduate + degree to get a good paying job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course it’s wrong to criticize anyone for choosing to be a humanities major in 2025. But I think there’s a general sense among 18 year olds today that it’s not going to be easy to forge a good life in the decades ahead.

Which is a very different sensibility than when most parents were going to college. We were perfectly happy to major in English or History or International Relations bc we had some confidence things were going to work out. And mostly they did.

But that confidence doesn’t exist anymore. So many smart students are all gravitating to the same majors - engineering, pre-med, business. CS may be dropping off now, but that’s going to make engineering even more competitive.

I think kids are scared - not unreasonably - about the future. So when a bright kid chooses Classical Studies or Art History in this climate, others assume they have generational wealth or they’re nuts.

+1 long gone are the days when a general liberal arts education,or a humanities degree got you a good paying job with just an undergrad. That was very pre 90s.

It's very different today. Most humanities undergrad majors require further education to get a good paying job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, the people who criticize humanities majors, saying things like “have fun working at Starbucks” and “that’s a waste of time,” are from lower social classes and are overall less polished. On the other hand, those who are accepting of humanities majors tent to be more educated, wealthy, and well spoken.

My experience is that the same person who is educated, wealthy and well spoken is quite congratulatory of someone studying history at Harvard, but has no problem telling the history major at Salisbury "have fun working at Starbucks".

Well yes, but as a history major from a low end state school, they aren’t wrong. It’s a dead end. My classmates I know about work as cashiers or customer service, or went on to law school. That’s OK…for many people a degree is a degree, but it wasn’t ever leading to a career in history.

As with most "non stem degrees", those who want to go further have to have a plan. Nobody is just sitting there asking for "someone with a BA in History". You have to find what you want to do, get your foot in the door (internships, etc) and create a path for yourself. But you should know that from the start of college.
And the stem people who go furthest are the ones motivated to create the "best path" for themselves as well. It's just easier to still get a job without that highly motivated position

Yes, most history majors don't become historians, or teach history, and not many philosophy majors become philosophers. But they get educated and develop critical thinking skills that they then use in other fields.

There's a reason why humanities are recommended so often as preparation for law school. These fields teach people to read, research, analyze and write.

[Anonymous]

Yes