How has the distribution of college majors changed? This graph, borrowed from A Backstage Sociologist, shows bachelor’s degrees conferred in the 1970-71 academic year and those conferred 41 years later.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 39
Karen Sieradski — May 17, 2014
The chart says BAs in any given year, yet it includes engineering and sciences. One generally is awarded a BS in those fields.
BMGM — May 17, 2014
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
A sociology professor — May 17, 2014
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.
Major Business | analepsis — May 18, 2014
[…] from http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/05/17/saturday-stat-college-majors-1970-to-today/ […]
RexSchrader — May 18, 2014
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.
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A "school" in the U.S. can refer to any educational institution - not only junior high and high schools, but also courses, institutes, colleges, and universities. Institutes in the U.S. refer to educational institutions that are authorized to award only professional certificates, continuing education certificates, etc., rather than higher education diplomas. To get such a diploma you need to get good grades, fortunately now there are many different services (as an example https://legitwritingservices.com/reviews/essaypro/) where every student can get the necessary help. It is true that sometimes the word "institute" can be found in the names of university departments that engage in in-depth education and research.
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Wow that's interesting. I'm going to college next year so I'm looking for some articles about education.
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Richard C. Delatorre — May 10, 2023
Hi there! I just read your blog post about college majors and found it to be really interesting. The data you presented about how college majors have changed over time was surprising to me, and it's clear that there have been some significant shifts in the types of degrees that students are pursuing.
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I wonder what factors have contributed to these changes in college majors. How do social, economic, cultural, and political forces shape the decisions of college students? How do personal, academic, and professional interests and goals affect the selection of college majors? How do these changes impact the future of higher education and society?
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