Comments on: Saturday Stat: College Majors, 1970 to Today

By: Lunad

Lunad — Sat, 24 May 2014 13:00:00 +0000

My understanding is that the rise of business has more to do with the increasing importance of a college degree. People who wanted to go into business, but didn’t want to start their own would often just get a job and work their way up. Now that a degree is required, many people without much academic curiosity are going to school. If you are just going to school to get a degree so you can make money, what should your major be? Many people just choose business as a default.

By: Conuly

Conuly — Mon, 19 May 2014 04:06:00 +0000

Or it might signify that people growing up in the 1960s were told, as my mother was, that there would always be jobs for teachers, it would always be a growing field.

Well, it *was* a growing field – during the baby boom. When those kids grew up, the bottom fell right out of the market.

By: BMGM

BMGM — Sun, 18 May 2014 17:35:00 +0000

That’s why you need to look at the absolute # in the NCES link I provided above.

By: BMGM

BMGM — Sun, 18 May 2014 17:30:00 +0000

No, that just reflects that people used to major in Education. Most teachers today major in something else and then get a separate teaching credential from a graduate program.

Math degrees used to include math teachers, statisticians and computer scientists. Now that there are separate programs for those fields, you need to add those back in to do a fair comparison to the 1970s.

The flat # of math and science students (despite increasing enrollments) of college students is sobering. At least the liberal arts is increasing in #s, despite shrinking in %.

By: RexSchrader

RexSchrader — Sun, 18 May 2014 15:17:00 +0000

I’m not sure that this graph tells the whole story. While the percentages are certainly different, the population of students now is significantly larger and has different priorities.

In the early 70s you could expect to be able to graduate high school and get a decent job that would potentially be a life long career. More manufacturing jobs were still available, a single income family might still support itself . . . and far fewer students overall could afford to go or were willing to go to college.

Now you pretty much have to have some sort of college degree to get a while collar position of any type. Massively more people are going to college and with a specific intent to earn more money, rather than for some sort of self enrichment.

I do wonder also about the absolute numbers of students graduating is liberal arts areas. They may be a smaller percentage overall, but they may be larger absolute numbers.

By: Karen Sieradski

Karen Sieradski — Sun, 18 May 2014 11:58:00 +0000

Thanks, Mike, that was my point. If they are indeed counting only BAs in engineering and science, they’re leaving out the majority of degrees in those fields. Otherwise, the graph is mislabeled. Either way, sloppy work.

By: Major Business | analepsis

Major Business | analepsis — Sun, 18 May 2014 05:49:59 +0000

[…] from http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/05/17/saturday-stat-college-majors-1970-to-today/ […]

By: A sociology professor

A sociology professor — Sun, 18 May 2014 04:44:00 +0000

My first thought was the typical knee jerk, “oh look, education used to be popular but now business is- shows how our priorities have changed…” but when I really considered it, we ended up with a lot of misguided people who were either lazy (summer’s off!) or idealistic, and a significant number were really bad teachers. Here’s hoping that the majority of the ones graduating now are there for the right reasons and will turn out to be good teachers.

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 18 May 2014 02:39:00 +0000

I believe that most engineering and natural sciences graduates do get a BS instead of a BA. The social sciences are more mixed. I think someone just mislabeled the graph. Great job there.

By: allstaken

allstaken — Sun, 18 May 2014 01:52:00 +0000

No, there are BAs in Engineering, Computer Science, Math. They have different requirements than BSs.

By: Minty

Minty — Sun, 18 May 2014 00:40:00 +0000

I’m not sure what to say other than “not always”? I don’t know how common it is, but I went to a liberal arts college that nonetheless had fairly large biology, chemistry and physics programs and gave BAs in those fields.

By: BMGM

BMGM — Sat, 17 May 2014 17:48:00 +0000

See the full data with absolute # (instead of %) here:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_313.asp

Engineering/Science/Technology can be either a BA or BS. Some liberal arts schools only confer BAs, some departments confer either a BA or a BS.

That’s discussed on my blog, with comments from a bunch of very successful women in STEM personally known to me.

http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2012/11/ba-or-bs.html

By: Karen Sieradski

Karen Sieradski — Sat, 17 May 2014 16:05:00 +0000

The chart says BAs in any given year, yet it includes engineering and sciences. One generally is awarded a BS in those fields.