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I was curious what sort of relationship there might be between recent trends in international students (who I expected would more frequently major in STEM than
by mxwsn 8y ago
I was curious what sort of relationship there might be between recent trends in international students (who I expected would more frequently major in STEM than humanities than the typical American population) and the article's noted decrease in humanities majors.
In [0], the share of college students that is international rose from ~3% in 2010 to ~5.5% in 2017. And from the table in [1], in 2017, about 2% of international students majored in "Humanities" by the strictest definition, though that expands to 10% if you include "Intensive English", "Communications and journalism", "Humanities" and "Legal studies and law enforcement".
The low share, though, definitely suggests that American college students are choosing humanities majors less.
Interestingly, Harvard in particular is focusing a lot on boosting its engineeering programs, including a $1 billion science and engineering campus expansion set for 2020. [2] So looking at recent stated major intents from Harvard applicants is expected to have a trend towards STEM.
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-students-united-states#EnrollmentTrends https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-studen...
[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/us-universities-report-declines-enrollments-new-international-students-study-abroad https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/us-universiti...
[2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/24/engineering-harvard-seas-students/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/24/engineering-har...
- arthurjj 8y agoI think the Harvard trend is probably too little to late on their part. Having worked on both coasts in a variety of companies I didn't even know Harvard had an engineering dept.
- andromeduck 8y agoSame here but it looks like they're partnering with MIT.
- realitygrill 8y agoHarvard didn't have an engineering department until a few years ago (might be year 5 or 6 now).
- gowld 8y agoYou're off by over 150 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_John_A._Paulson_School_of_Engineering_and_Applied_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_John_A._Paulson_School... Harvard invented one of the first computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I What you might be misremembering is that > In February 2007, the Harvard Corporation and Overseers voted for the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences to change its name to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Agathos 8y agorealitygrill is probably thinking about the new SEAS campus that mxwsn mentioned. I think they started planning the campus around the time of that renaming.
- gowld 8y agoThe website you are posting on was created by a Harvard engineering graduate, Paul Graham. Harvard has a small, elite engineering and applied sciences school, so you'd generally encounter their grads at elite companies and research institutions, leaning more towards applied science research than what's commonly pictured as "engineering". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_John_A._Paulson_School_of_Engineering_and_Applied_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_John_A._Paulson_School...