TUCSON, Ariz. 鈥 Olivia Howe was hesitant at first to add French to her major in finance at the University of Arizona, fearing that it wouldn鈥檛 be very useful in the labor market.
Then her language skills helped her land a job at the multinational technology company Siemens, which will be waiting for her when she graduates this spring.
鈥淭he reason I got the job is because of my French. I didn鈥檛 see it as a practical choice, but now I do,鈥 said Howe, who, to communicate with colleagues and clients, also plans to take up German. 鈥淭he humanities taught me I could do it.鈥
The simple message that majoring in the humanities pays off is being pushed aggressively by this university and a handful of others; they hope to reverse decades of plummeting enrollment in subjects that teach skills employers say they need from graduates but aren鈥檛 getting.
The number of undergraduates majoring in the humanities at the University of Arizona since 2018, when it introduced a bachelor鈥檚 degree in applied humanities that connects the humanities with programs in business, engineering, medicine and other fields. It also hired a humanities recruitment director and marketing team and started training faculty members to enlist students in the major with the promise that an education in the humanities leads to jobs.
That鈥檚 an uncharacteristic role for humanities professors, who have tended to resist suggestions that it鈥檚 their role to ready students for the workforce.
But it鈥檚 become an existential one.
Nationwide, between 2012 and 2022 the number of undergraduate degrees awarded in the humanities 鈥 English, history, languages, literature, philosophy and related subjects 鈥 fell 24 percent, according to the 亚色影库app. It鈥檚 now below 200,000 for the first time in more than two decades.