Several arts and humanities majors at Cal Poly Humboldt are seeing a downturn in their enrollment numbers

By Eli Staton

There has been a downward trend in enrollment in English, Philosophy, and History majors at Cal Poly Humboldt. According to data from Humboldt’s Institutional Research, Analytics, and Reporting website, in the past 32 years since enrollment data has been collected: English majors decreased 62.5%; Philosophy majors decreased 52.0%; History majors decreased 74.6%.

Comparatively, enrollment in these STEM majors increased: Biological Sciences increased 12.1%; Computer Science increased 62.0%; Environmental Science Management increased 24.4%. 

Overall, Humboldt enrollment decreased 23.6% from 7,823 in Fall 1991 to 5,976 in Fall 2023.

Lisa Tremain, Department Chair for English and philosophy at the university, points out that this data does not show the whole picture of what is happening with enrollments. 

“The IRAR data doesn’t capture the number of students who start here at Cal Poly in one major, typically STEM, and realize ‘this isn’t a fit for me’, and they come to majors like English,” Tremain said. “I sign forms constantly where students are changing their major to come to English.”

Tremain observed that because of the change to a polytechnic status, humanities enrollments have increased.

“I want to correct a misconception that in the humanities here at Cal Poly Humboldt we’re going to continue to see this decline,” Tremain said. “Actually, what’s happening is that because of the transition to Cal Poly, we’re having more students come to us overall, and some of the students are choosing the humanities, and the data from philosophy is showing that.”

There has been a downward trend across the country and globally according to Martha Nussbaum’s 2010 book, Not for Profit, which is about the importance of humanities for democracy. 

Another factor that is not captured in the IRAR data is the number of students who minor in humanities.

“We have lots of students who minor in philosophy. Many of them don’t want a major because they’re worried that with a philosophy degree, they won’t be employable,” said Benjamin Shaeffer, Humboldt’s philosophy department leader. “Unfortunately, that actually is an illusion. Philosophy majors do really well in the market, it turns out.”

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences released a report in October 2023 showing the earnings outcomes for humanities majors in each state. The report was based on data collected between 2017 to 2021 by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which sampled over 15 million cases nationwide. Results for California showed that full-time workers ages 22 to 26 with a humanities degree had median earnings of $46,347, and $90,634 for ages 30 to 59. The survey’s definition of humanities went beyond English, philosophy, and history to include ethnic studies, foreign languages, art history, linguistics, and religious Studies, to name a few. 

There seems to be a misconception that humanities graduates will be uncompetitive in the job market.

“The reality is that humanities do very well in the job market,” Jeff Crane, Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences at Humboldt, said. “Within 20 years they’ll be making as much, or more than, people with engineering degrees and other STEM degrees.”

Crane is not opposed to STEM degrees, but rather he is opposed to the undeserved criticism that humanities degrees receive from the public.

“Business is valuable, engineering is valuable, science is valuable, but they’re not the ones getting hammered and criticized on a regular basis,” Crane said. “In our society, it’s the humanities.”  

In reference to the bias toward STEM advertising in Humboldt’s recruitment videos,  Tremain said, “we’re seeing students out on the riverbed, students on the Coral Sea on the boat, students at the beach, students up in the forest…I do think it’s a PR problem.”

Tori Vargas, a junior at Humboldt double majoring in History Education and Religious Studies with a minor in anthropology, is the president of the History Club. She has noticed the lack of advertising for humanities majors at Humboldt. 

“I really wish that Humboldt would advertise that there’s a religious studies major here and that there’s a history major here, because they just aren’t advertised to people,” Vargas said. “People don’t even know about Humboldt. My high school had 4,000 students and I was the only one in my graduating class out of a thousand to come here.” 

Vargas also recognizes how cuts in funding for the humanities departments are effecting her experience at Humboldt. 

“We have to fundraise our own money for travel and for lodging and everything,” Vargas said, referring to History Club field trips. 

During this interview, Vargas and a fellow history club member were selling coffee and Goldfish crackers in the lobby of Founders Hall to save money for the annual American Historical Association’s conference held in New York in January 2025. 

“Part of the religious studies programs have something called experiential weekends where they pay to take students to visit temples and stuff like that,” Vargas said. “They’ve been having to cut back on the amount of people who can go on these trips, and they’ve been having to change locations and stuff because they haven’t had enough funding to take people. They don’t offer bus rides anymore and you have to drive yourself, which really sucks.”

Providing these kinds of experiential education opportunities is one of the ways to help students engage with the community and apply the skills they learn, said Crane. The college is also trying to help students get more internships.

“And we can say to parents, you know, ‘your son or daughter will be able to get a job because they’ll do an internship, say, with College Corps, one of our programs, which will help them secure a position,’” Crane said. 

The leadership and faculty in Humboldt’s College of Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences are also working on creating a new major called Public Humanities or Applied Humanities, which will be a bachelor’s degree program aiming for release in Fall 2025. The curriculum will be a mix of philosophy, religious studies, and world languages and cultures.

“Students will be taking what they’re learning in their classes to address very specific issues in society, and then build a set of skills that will strengthen them both on an individual level, but also as candidates in the job market,”  Crane said. 

The stakes are high when choosing a major because a university education in the United States can also be expensive. Considerations for the financial return-on-investment can weigh heavily when deciding on a major. Possibly even more so for first-generation students and for Pell Grant recipients, a federal government subsidy for students who have exceptional financial need. According to Cal Poly Humboldt’s IRAR data, in Fall 2023, 40% of students were first-generation, and 38% of students were Pell Grant recipients.

“Are we just creating workers?” Tremain asked. “What about creating humans? It’s problematic that we’re so focused on, ‘I go to school to get a job and become a worker.’ One of the things that majoring in English will do is it will help you to be an engaged citizen, a critical thinker, someone who can separate truth from fact, someone who can appreciate beauty, someone who understands the importance of the literary arts as part of a full human experience.”

The job market is changing rapidly in the 21st century, with the ubiquity of the internet and other technological advancements. There is now the ability for many people to work from anywhere with internet access, so competition for those jobs is no longer confined to geographic locations.

“The world of work is going to change significantly in the next few decades,” said  Tremain. 

Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence are rumored to change the job market in drastic ways.

“I haven’t figured out what the hell to even think about A.I.,” said Crane. 

Unlike technology, one thing that is unlikely to change quickly is human nature and our need to communicate effectively with each other.

“If we’re really standing by our discipline, we teach people how to love the world and we teach people how to love and understand each other,” said Heal McKnight, faculty member in Humboldt’s Creative Writing Program. “If you walk out of here, a sturdy person who has a sense of humor about who you are, you can put those skills to work in all kinds of places.”

The curriculums in Humboldt’s humanities departments are designed to nourish the development of students into critical thinkers who have confidence in themselves. This is gained through analysis of texts, writing, class discussions, and exposure to different perspectives.

“The thing that people don’t realize about philosophy is it’s not providing you answers, but it’s providing you tools. It’s providing you with the capacity to think independently,” Shaeffer said. “So it’s creating the space for you to think for yourself. And that’s what we’re interested in fostering. I think [this] goes for all the humanities, it goes for art, it’s not unique to philosophy.”

Declining enrollments in humanities courses at Cal Poly Humboldt can lead to some course options becoming unavailable in the future. In the current educational paradigm, it comes down to how to allocate limited resources of budgets and faculty. The cutting of humanities course options can limit the growth of students and ultimately humanity becomes less humane than it could be.

“The only way to save the humanities is to take humanities, because if we have enrollment numbers, then we won’t get funding cut,” Vargas said.