What the Decline in Humanities Majors Means for College-Bound Students
New data shows humanities bachelor’s degrees reached their lowest level since 1991. The trend raises important questions about career planning, reading skills, and the value of a broad college education.
Humanities degrees are becoming less common
Colleges and universities awarded 164,847 humanities bachelor’s degrees in 2025, the lowest number since 1991, according to a report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences covered by Inside Higher Ed. The total was 30.4 percent lower than in 2012, when humanities degrees were at their recent peak.
The decline includes fields such as English, history, religious studies, area studies, and languages other than English. Between 2012 and 2025, the number of degrees awarded fell by more than 40 percent in English and history, with even larger declines in several other fields.
For families planning for college, this may look like a simple shift toward majors with more obvious career pathways. But the story is more complicated—and worth discussing before students choose a course of study based only on job-title lists or short-term trends.
Career uncertainty is shaping students’ choices
The report identifies concern about employment prospects as one reason students are moving away from humanities majors. As tuition costs rise, students and families understandably want to know how a degree may connect to future work.
That concern should be taken seriously. Students need honest guidance about the courses, experiences, and skills that can make a major useful in the workplace. A humanities degree may not point to one single profession in the way some technical or professional programs do, so students may need to build a clearer plan through internships, writing samples, campus activities, or additional training.
At the same time, uncertainty does not mean a field has no value. Humanities coursework develops reading, writing, interpretation, research, and fact-checking skills. Those abilities matter in any setting where people must evaluate information, communicate clearly, and make judgments—especially as artificial intelligence changes how work is completed.
The practical question for students is not simply, “What job does this major guarantee?” It is also, “What can I do well because of this major, and how will I demonstrate those abilities?”
Reading confidence is part of the problem
The report also connects declining humanities enrollment with students’ discomfort with long-form reading. Enrollment in humanities and general liberal arts majors fell 17 percent between 2020 and 2025, while several other fields recovered to at least their pre-pandemic enrollment levels.
This matters well before college. Students who struggle to sustain attention through a difficult chapter may avoid classes that require substantial reading. They may also have trouble recognizing the difference between reading words and understanding an argument, evaluating evidence, or identifying an author’s assumptions.
These are teachable skills. Families can support them by making room for regular reading without a screen, discussing ideas rather than focusing only on completion, and helping students break longer assignments into manageable sections. Teachers and tutors can model how to annotate, summarize, question, and return to a confusing passage instead of treating reading difficulty as a fixed limitation.
Reading ability should not be viewed as a prerequisite that some students either have or lack. It is a skill that develops with practice, feedback, and appropriately challenging material.
A broader approach to college planning
The report does not suggest that every student should major in the humanities. It does suggest that colleges, schools, and families should be careful about treating enrollment trends as a complete measure of educational value.
Students choosing a major should consider several factors: their interests, academic strengths, tolerance for different kinds of work, financial situation, and the experiences they can pursue alongside coursework. A student interested in history, writing, languages, or the arts may benefit from pairing that interest with career exploration rather than dismissing it immediately.
The report notes that humanistic studies of the arts, including art history and film studies, were the only humanities area with enrollment growth over the past decade. That difference may reflect how students connect with visual forms of communication. It also reinforces the broader point that students’ engagement can change when a subject is presented in an accessible and meaningful way.
For educators, the challenge is to make the value of humanities learning visible. For families, the challenge is to ask better questions than whether a major has a single obvious job attached to it. And for students, the goal is to develop both a realistic plan and the confidence to explain what they can contribute.
Humanities programs may be facing financial pressure, but the skills they teach remain relevant. The more immediate concern is whether students are being prepared to read deeply enough to experience those benefits—and whether colleges are willing to preserve opportunities for them to do so.