Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Decline of the English Department


The American Scholar has a piece about the decline of the English Department. William Chase discusses how it happened and what we can do to reverse the trend.

From the story...

During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education. The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically; the same is true of philosophy, foreign languages, art history, and kindred fields, including history. As someone who has taught in four university English departments over the last 40 years, I am dismayed by this shift, as are my colleagues here and there across the land. And because it is probably irreversible, it is important to attempt to sort out the reasons—the many reasons—for what has happened.

First the facts: while the study of English has become less popular among undergraduates, the study of business has risen to become the most popular major in the nation’s colleges and universities. With more than twice the majors of any other course of study, business has become the concentration of more than one in five American undergraduates. Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04 (the last academic year with available figures):

English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to 3.9 percent
Foreign languages and literatures: from 2.5 percent to 1.3 percent
Philosophy and religious studies: from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent
History: from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent
Business: from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent

In one generation, then, the numbers of those majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent. Despite last year’s debacle on Wall Street, the humanities have not benefited; students are still wagering that business jobs will be there when the economy recovers.


Image care of St. Lawrence University English Department.

1 comment:

Frederick Glaysher said...

I suggest other views on the decline of the English department in the following blog reviews:

The American Scholar - Decline of the English Department
Having read The American Scholar for probably over thirty years, I could only feel the most seething contempt for the Autumn 2009 article by William M. Chace, “The Decline of the English Department: How it happened and what could be done to reverse it.”
http://fglaysher.com/TheGlobe/2009/09/17/american-scholar-decline-of-the-english-department/


Saul Bellow. Ravelstein. Allan Bloom.
American English departments have proven themselves unworthy stewards of what is noble in human nature, in the great public.
http://fglaysher.com/Reviews/saul-bellow-ravelstein-allan-bloom

Frederick Glaysher
http://www/fglaysher.com