Well this is sobering.

Hi Monte,
From where did you get these data? I presume the dataset represents outcomes from the USA? Are your comments of despair about the "eventual extinction of well educated citizens" specifically about the decline in the social sciences, or the fall in all the sciences represented in this chart?

I suspect there is more to this chart and part of the soul searching much happen within sociology itself. I suspect the steep rise in business graduates and perhaps to a lesser extent in the life sciences and communications are partly a development in technology and the reality of the job market. Education is expensive. Australia is facing severe cuts and changes that will further undermine education in most fields outside of medical professions.

One way that sociology might address this is through a stronger focus on applied sociology. Without question, developing the sociological imagination has many personal and professional benefits, as critical thinking can help to improve civic participation and empower us to understand our lives in a broader context. But if you are a poor or otherwise disadvantaged young person thinking about the debt and other commitments you need to balance, pursuing a degree in sociology can be daunting. We are largely positioned as an academic discipline. There are few academic jobs for our graduates. Market forces may be driving graduates away from social science, but our discipline can be doing much more to demonstrate the applicability of our theories and methods to specific jobs and industries. It is not enough to simply say we can use the sociological imagination in infinite ways; students should be given concrete examples in the classroom of how they will use sociological knowledge to answer specific questions for particular clients and audiences.

How do you see these data and what can we do about it collectively to improve the "sociological enterprise"?

Thanks very much for you detailed response - the pingback is also by me from my other NFP group, Sociology at Work.

I agree with you about inequality within sociology. Sociology is still dominated by White men. The top citations are still attributed to White male sociologists from Western Europe and America. The ASA has also reported that a higher number of minority students (African American and Latin people for example) study sociology but very few of them rise through the ranks of academia. It's all well and good to supply students with critical thinking to help them make sense of their oppression, but if our primary vehicle for employing sociologists - academia - is still reproducing inequalities, what good does that do? The sociological imagination is not enough to survive on if you're poor or disadvantaged. It is not enough to believe that sociology provides the tools for revolution if we do not collectively do the work to change the primary institution where our major activities are focused - higher education.

How do you see your vision of populist sociology changing the status quo? You mention sharing information with students and practitioners. We already do this, effectively. The issue is power and resources - academia perpetuates a career track for sociologists within academia. It is not sustainable as there aren't enough jobs. Most academics have not really worked outside academia so they don't actually know what it's like to work as an applied sociologist, and the pressures we come under, and the various ways in which our discipline does not prepare us for applied work. How do you see this changing under populist sociology?

What about my first question - where are this data from? There is no citation. Thanks.