The declining number of English majors

[Anonymous]

Go to any English Course Catalog for Fall 2024 and point me one that isn't teaching British Writers, Shakespeare, American Writers, Joyce/Modernists. And, then come back to me when you inevitably fail, because it just isn't true.

+1. A quick review of the courses at UVA and VT shows a mix of classics and contemporary options. All the attacks on the "woke" curriculum is ridiculous - just be honest and admit you don't support kids reading diverse authors. Either way, since your STEM major clearly has the world on a string, why concern yourself with what someone else is studying?

[Anonymous]

It’s canon.
For the love of God.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s canon.
For the love of God.

I'm not convinced half the posters here have taken an English course.

[Anonymous]

It seems to me that the lack of serious reading is because of poor habits developed before college. So few want to engage with Milton, Austen, Joyce, Faulkner etc. But dumbing down the curriculum and trying to be "relevant" and "woke" by putting Ibrahim X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo on college syllabi isn't helping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems to me that the lack of serious reading is because of poor habits developed before college. So few want to engage with Milton, Austen, Joyce, Faulkner etc. But dumbing down the curriculum and trying to be "relevant" and "woke" by putting Ibrahim X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo on college syllabi isn't helping.

Whose doing this? The curriculum still includes all the authors you previously discussed, but I have never seen DiAngelo in a University English classroom, maybe Angela Davis, but not DiAngelo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems to me that the lack of serious reading is because of poor habits developed before college. So few want to engage with Milton, Austen, Joyce, Faulkner etc. But dumbing down the curriculum and trying to be "relevant" and "woke" by putting Ibrahim X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo on college syllabi isn't helping.

Whose doing this? The curriculum still includes all the authors you previously discussed, but I have never seen DiAngelo in a University English classroom, maybe Angela Davis, but not DiAngelo.

NP. People here seem to be incapable of knowing the difference between Sociology, African American Studies (it's really just Black authors they have an issue with, many problematic Asian/Hispanic/White writers that these anti-postmodernist western civilization freedom fighters wouldn't be giving such a fuss about), Gender Studies, and English. English isn't a degree based off the most popular book you see in the bookstore. If anything, Sociology classes should be going over DiAngelo and Kendi and interrogating their ideas and methods. Most commenters are angry at Sociology, not literature.

[Anonymous]

As the anecdotal English major with a high salary, I will support my kid’s choice for an English major and encourage a minor at certain institutions.

Maybe my income clouds my judgement, but the ability to digest vast amounts of information I developed during my studies has been invaluable.

It’s also been a long time, so I would be interested in learning how today’s departments conduct themselves. I can’t imagine much has changed aside from the occasional course/seminar that more reflects current societal hot topics rather than the themes I was exposed to during my time.

[Anonymous]

There's no way the woke ideologues in sociology departments will allow for a proper interrogations of charlatans like DiAngelo and Kendi.

[Anonymous]

Aren’t all humanities majors seeing declining enrollment? It’s not due to what is now taught or ideology….its due to market forces and student demand.

For all those successful as English majors, the only concern for your kids is that if fewer people are entering the workforce with the major, then you are less and less likely to have people making hiring decisions with these majors.

As much as you may despise business or STEM, it will be rare that people with these majors will hire people with a humanities background.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren’t all humanities majors seeing declining enrollment? It’s not due to what is now taught or ideology….its due to market forces and student demand.

For all those successful as English majors, the only concern for your kids is that if fewer people are entering the workforce with the major, then you are less and less likely to have people making hiring decisions with these majors.

As much as you may despise business or STEM, it will be rare that people with these majors will hire people with a humanities background.

Yep. Self-fulfilling prophecy and ironically recursive.

[Anonymous]

The liberal arts destroyed themselves. Outside of a few institutions holding the line (St Johns and a collection of tiny classics-focused religious colleges), there's not much intellectual seriousness left. This is as true of selective institutions as it is of the Community College of Eastern Northwest South Dakota.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The liberal arts destroyed themselves. Outside of a few institutions holding the line (St Johns and a collection of tiny classics-focused religious colleges), there's not much intellectual seriousness left. This is as true of selective institutions as it is of the Community College of Eastern Northwest South Dakota.

Not every humanities person needs to go into Classics. There are other parts of our culture to study. Even then, St Johns students are pretty bad Classics students and mediocre English literature students. They don't learn the languages well enough for classics, and they hardly read enough literary theory or actual practice of writing texts to go into English. It's cool that they preserve the liberal arts tradition, but they are worse than the average student in all the fields they study: religious studies, English, Classics, Middle Eastern Studies, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The liberal arts destroyed themselves. Outside of a few institutions holding the line (St Johns and a collection of tiny classics-focused religious colleges), there's not much intellectual seriousness left. This is as true of selective institutions as it is of the Community College of Eastern Northwest South Dakota.

When you say "liberal arts" I don't think you realize that it includes the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and mathematics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The liberal arts destroyed themselves. Outside of a few institutions holding the line (St Johns and a collection of tiny classics-focused religious colleges), there's not much intellectual seriousness left. This is as true of selective institutions as it is of the Community College of Eastern Northwest South Dakota.

When you say "liberal arts" I don't think you realize that it includes the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and mathematics.

Correct…I think they really mean humanities.

Again…these degrees didn’t decline due to any ideology shift. It started with the Great Recession when people saw the STEM and other quantitative majors do ok and the humanities majors suffer (coinciding with Wall Street and consulting not hiring anyone during 2008/2009 and in fact firing a ton of people…this effectively shut down lucrative routes for humanities majors from top schools).

It will be difficult to correct and will only happen if something causes a true shift in the job market. The current tech “slowdown” is nothing compared to the dotcom implosion (which caused a drop in STEM majors for a good 5+ years, before it started growing again).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Academia has made literature an incredibly unappealing thing to study. Take a look at the specialities of your average English Department these days. It's not something you want to spend four years immersed in. No one has done more to destroy language and literature than contemporary academia. It is incredibly stifling, boring, pedantic, hyper-political, and all around not fun. I congratulate every bright liberal arts student who has chosen to not major in English. Well done.

Yes. My MIL is an English professor at an Ivy and she would likely agree with everything you wrote. She hates how hyper-political it has become.

I majored in English because I loved English literature, beautiful language, writing and grammar.

You could not pay me to major in English now. It is way to political, and completely ignores the "English" part of english.