The first image that comes up when you google “Most valuable college majors” is represented in the chart above. Four out of five in the “least valuable” column are arts majors. But what do we deem valuable or invaluable?
Students in high school are at the pivotal age when pressure begins to build on choosing a possible career path; and as time has progressed, universities around the nation have noticed a steep decline in humanities majors.
“There’s perhaps pressure or encouragement to find a career path that is going to be lucrative, which tends to disproportionately fall in the STEM area,” said social studies teacher Brian Link.
Although East is equipped with an extensive arts program and broad humanities course offerings, things are starkly different on a wider scale. The study of history and English at the collegiate level has “fallen by a full third,” while overall humanities enrollment in the United States has declined by seventeen percent, according to “The New Yorker.”
Many students may feel they must face the decision of what career they are passionate about and what will garner them a salary to their liking. Income, as also noted on the chart, is one of the main factors in how the value of a college major is determined. However, it may be less reflective of personal fulfillment in the long run than projected.
According to Band and Orchestra teacher Ryan Ellefsen, “studies have been shown that there’s a point [at which] you reach a certain amount of money, [and] joy doesn’t increase at all.”
“Time” Magazine also highlights this point by noting how a Princeton study determined that people’s degree of fulfillment doesn’t change much after their income exceeds $75,000 a year.
“I would say that somebody who is doing what they love to do is probably going to experience a higher quality of life than somebody who [is] following the dollar signs,” Ellefsen said. He also notes that STEM and humanities interests need not necessarily contradict one another.
“They can definitely coexist….” Ellefsen said. “Instead of STEM, there’s STEAM [where] the ‘a’ or arts is right in the middle.”
Link similarly underlines the pitfalls of creating a false dichotomy between STEM, arts and humanities interests.
“I believe that we have a lot to learn from all disciplines,” said Link. “You can’t have effective politicians and government workers who don’t understand science; that’s going to lead to poor outcomes. But conversely, you can’t have a society [with] inventions and technology that doesn’t understand humans and humanity; it can create a very dreary dystopia.”
Senior Audrey Mann notes how “part of the issue of undervaluing the humanities is a lack of critical thinking skills. There’s still deductive and inductive reasoning in STEM, but there’s a lot of analytical abilities drilled into the humanities which is really important.”
Mann, although interested in pursuing a career in STEM, is still heavily involved in the world of arts through dance, and she notes how “sometimes it feels like students in STEM look down upon those in the arts… both sides defend their value and it creates this tense relationship between them that makes it seem like one versus the other, when it shouldn’t be like that at all.”
East’s departments appear to reflect a functioning coexistence between STEM and the arts, from its wide participation in engineering and biomed classes to its talent in theater and music performance. However, there remains a space between those disciplines that, according to junior Clare Lorenz, isn’t as firmly emphasized.
“Especially at East, we do really well in STEM,” Lorenz said. “We do really well in the arts. But there’s a gap in the middle [that] spans the social and soft sciences.”
Lorenz also reports that she’s noticed national value shifting increasingly towards STEM departments in real time as she’s toured universities throughout the course of her college search.
“So many campuses are doing construction right now… and almost all of that construction is for a new engineering building [or] a new science building.”
The humanities and arts courses now continue to face the effects of an accelerating interest in STEM. But contrary to school and national trend, and the belief that the humanities are being left behind, Link highlights how all disciplines, and the crucial interactions between them, will always remain essential and relevant.
“People have different interests in different passions,” Link said. “And if they’re both looking [at] ways in terms of how the world works and operates, whether it’s figuring out the machines that are going to make our world a better place…[or] understanding the essential core of human nature, and what humans potentially would do with the designs or implementations of the machines.”
Ultimately, Link emphasizes the importance of staying true to one’s intrinsic passions in order to maintain this balance: “Don’t let those outside pressures, whatever they might be, ultimately deny a path of who you are as an individual and who you want to be.”
Image credit: Avery Tortora/The ECHO
