What the Labor Market Is Like for People in These Clusters of Arts Communication

In 2009-2010, nearly as many recession-shaken students at four-year colleges and universities graduated with humanities degrees as STEM degrees.

Since the Great Recession, the number of STEM majors in bachelor'due south degree-and-to a higher place programs has mushroomed, going from 388,000 graduates in 2009-10 to 550,000 in 2015-xvi—43% growth.

And degrees in the humanities, programs similar philosophy and foreign languages? They've declined -0.4%.

Emsi studied recently released data on college caste output from the National Center for Education Statistics and found that the share of STEM degrees rose rapidly from 2009-10 to 2015-16 in almost every state. This acceleration came at the same time the share of humanities majors—after trending at a like output level as Stalk majors in the years preceding the recession (see below chart)—took a striking in several states.

Nationally, the share of bachelor's-and-above science, technology, engineering, and math degrees has gone from fifteen% to 21%. And the share of humanities degrees, fourteen%, is the same as in 2009-10. (Meanwhile, skilled trades programsgo along to exist de-emphasized, though graduates in welding and other similar programs has increased as we'll show afterward.)

STEM vs. Humanities Majors by Country

The emphasis on STEM programs and jobs has permeated politics, instruction, and the workforce organization. Governors take talked about or taken steps to defund higher programs that don't atomic number 82 to jobs. The educational system has pushed scads of Stem programs, in simple schools and even earlier. And businesses have increasingly asked for workers with STEM or more general technical skills.

The rise of STEM majors and the decline of the humanities, then, could exist a sign that colleges, schools, parents, and students are responding to market place needs. Or it could only be that more people started viewing higher primarily every bit a means to get a chore or observe a career, just as the economy cratered.

The STEM vs. humanities dynamic, however, is dissimilar state by state.

In California, the largest producer of bachelor'south-and-above graduates, humanities degrees dipped -3% while Stem degrees increased 39%. In New York, the second-largest producer of graduates, the number Stalk majors shot upwards even more quickly (45%) and humanities was apartment (1%).

In Texas, humanities degrees outnumbered Stalk degrees as the recession was ending. But in 2015-16, the concluding year of available information, Texas produced nearly 12,000 more Stalk majors than humanities grads.

Humanities fared even worse in Washington (-17% growth), Kansas (-15%), and Pennsylvania (-14%). These are the iii states where humanities degrees have plummeted the well-nigh from 2009-10 to 2015-16.

Meanwhile, Wyoming and Maryland led the nation in 2015-16 with the share of bachelor's-and-above degrees in science, technology, engineering science, and math. Wyoming's Stem concentration was 34% in 2015-xvi (up from 25% in 2009-x) and Maryland's was 30% (up from twenty%).

Vermont and Virginia had the highest share of degrees from the humanities, at 23% and 22%, respectively, in 2015-16. The 2 states accept taken divergent paths, though: Vermont's number of humanities degrees barbarous v% from 2009-10 to 2015-16 and Virginia'due south rose eleven%.

Then in that location are the states where both degrees areas take gone wild. New Hampshireled the nation in Stalk and humanities caste percentage growth—88% for STEM and 54% for humanities.*West Virginia, Arizona, and New Mexico saw large jumps in both as well.

Run across our Tableau visualization higher up for land-by-land trends.

*New Hampshire is home to Southern New Hampshire Academy, which has a large online presence and produced over 1,400 humanities grades in 2015-2016 and over 750 STEM grads.

What This Means

Does the ascent in Stalk degrees hateful the needs of businesses are being better served? Yes and no.

Sure, humanities degrees take simply loose connections to growing occupations in the job market. Merely many employers value the well-rounded skills, like critical thinking and written communication, that humanities and liberal arts grads tin provide. (See the compelling defense of liberal arts degrees from Wilson Peden of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in Fortune.)

Non all STEM grads, meanwhile, go into STEM fields. Nor do all humanities grads become English lit professors.

The Humanities Indicators, a project from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, used microdata from the American Community Survey to find that xiv% of humanities majors with advanced degrees worked in legal occupations in 2013 and 5.8% worked in wellness care. Among terminal bachelor'south holders in the humanities—those who don't get on to an advanced degree—xiv% worked as managers and three.2% worked in calculator occupations in 2013.

Defining Stem and Humanities Programs

We used definitions from NCES to group programme categories for STEM and humanities.

The Digest of Education Statistics, part of NCES, defines humanities using eight broad program groupings: area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies; English language and literature/letters; foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics; liberal arts and sciences, general studies and humanities; multi/interdisciplinary studies; philosophy and religious studies; theology and religious vocations; and visual and performing arts. (The Digest puts history in a separate category, and then we did not include information technology.)

For STEM, we used the definition in a 2009 NCES report on students who study in science, mathematics, technology, and applied science. Like humanities, this definition includes eight broad program offerings: mathematics and statistics; science technologies/technicians; concrete sciences; biological and biomedical sciences, agricultural sciences; engineering; engineering technologies; and computer and information sciences.

Technical Notes

• More people are studying information science than the NCES information shows. The IPEDS survey from NCES is only mandatory to educational institutions that receive Title IV funding. (Even so, the data is self-reported by colleges.) This means that coding bootcamps and other nontraditional programs and schools aren't captured by the Education Department.
• We didn't include graduates below the bachelor's degree level, but nearly fourscore% of liberal arts and general studies majors (the broad grouping under CIP 24) earned acquaintance's degrees in 2015-16. Many of these community college graduates transfer to four-twelvemonth programs. Miami Dade College, Valencia College, and Broward College in Florida put out the largest number of these graduates.

Conflicting Broader Degree Trends

Looking more than broadly than STEM vs. the humanities, several NCES data points illustrate that not all students are taking the career-focused instruction route, or at least not adjustment their didactics to in-demand careers. The below numbers are for all accolade levels, not just available's and in a higher place.

• No unmarried program other than business organisation assistants and management produced every bit many every bit graduates than liberal arts and sciences, nearly 320,000. Most of these graduates came from associate caste programs meant to transfer to four-year institutions.
• General studies completions take increased every twelvemonth since at to the lowest degree 2002-03 (that's equally far as Emsi'due south program database goes back) and produced only nether 114,000 completions in 2015-sixteen, a 175% increase since 2002-03. More than than 80% of these were associate degrees.
• Cosmetology certificates declined and psychology degrees barely grew from the previous academic twelvemonth, merely these 2 fields still made up over 230,000 completions in 2015-xvi.

On the other mitt, some program trends show students are taking labor market signals. The number of law school graduates, amongst the declining legal job marketplace, declined for the third directly year and are down xx% since a high of nearly 47,000 in 2012-13. And although registered nursing only saw a modest degree bump, family practice nursing—a much smaller and more specialized program—added more full graduates and grew 35% from 2014-15.

On the skilled trades front, where degree data is traditionally lacking, the welding engineering and electrician programs each increased their output 9% from the previous bookish twelvemonth. More ninety% of the 52,000 welding and electrician completions in 2015-2016 came via short-term certificates, perhaps a sign that the apparent shortage of tradespeople could exist dissipating presently.

For more on industry data and workforce trends, subscribe to our newsletter. Read about Emsi information here. Contact Josh Wright via email ([email protected]) and Twitter (@ByJoshWright).

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Source: https://www.economicmodeling.com/2016/03/20/stem-programs-humanities-in-each-state/

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