The number of students earning humanities bachelor's degrees has dropped 30% since 2012 and now sits at its lowest point since 1991, according to new data from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. But the rate of decline has slowed to nearly nothing — just 0.4% from 2024 to 2025. If you're deciding whether to major in English, history, or philosophy, here's what the numbers actually mean for you.

What the New Data Shows

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences released updated figures through its Humanities Indicators project this week. The findings, reported by Inside Higher Ed and Higher Ed Dive on September 9–10, 2026, put hard numbers on a trend students and faculty have felt for years.

U.S. colleges awarded 164,847 humanities bachelor's degrees in 2025 — a 30.4% drop from the field's most recent peak in 2012. As a share of all bachelor's degrees, humanities fell from roughly 15% in 2005 to just 8.1% in 2025, the smallest share since comprehensive data became available in 1987.

The steepest drops by discipline:

  • Religious studies: –56.3% since peak
  • Area studies: –53.2%
  • Non-English languages and literature: –50.8%
  • English: –43.8%
  • History: –40.6%

These are not rounding errors. English and history — the two disciplines most students picture when they say "humanities" — have each lost more than 40% of their graduates over roughly a decade.

What Most Coverage Gets Wrong

News articles about this data are treating it as a continuing emergency. It isn't — not anymore.

The steepest part of the decline happened between 2021 and 2023, when degrees fell 12.7% in just two years. From 2023 to 2024, the drop slowed to 2.1%. From 2024 to 2025? Just 0.4%.

The freefall has essentially stopped. Whether that represents a floor or a brief pause isn't clear yet, but for a student making a major decision right now, the relevant question isn't "are humanities degrees declining?" It's "what do I do with one?"

That question has a more interesting answer than most articles let on.

Three Things Most Articles Don't Tell You

1. The supply drop may actually help humanities graduates.

When a discipline loses 30% of its graduates in a decade, the jobs that used to hire those graduates don't disappear at the same rate. Government agencies, law firms, publishers, nonprofits, policy organizations, and journalism outlets still need people who can read carefully, write clearly, and think across disciplines. With fewer humanities graduates competing for those roles, the ones who do graduate may face less competition — at least in fields where the degree itself signals something.

2. AI companies are actively hiring humanities graduates for specialized work.

This sounds counterintuitive, but philosophy, linguistics, and English majors are in measurable demand at AI companies for roles in AI safety research, content policy, and the work of annotating and evaluating language model outputs. Critical thinking about language, ethics, and human communication is not something models do well — it's something the people who build and audit them need to do. That niche is real and growing, even if it doesn't show up in broad salary surveys yet.

3. The decline is driven by perception, not outcomes.

A Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis found that the earnings gap between humanities graduates and other bachelor's degree holders is smaller at mid-career than it appears at entry level — because humanities majors are more likely to pursue law school, graduate school, and other advanced degrees that raise lifetime earnings. The perception that a history degree leads nowhere doesn't match the 20-year earnings picture for people who use it strategically.

If you're choosing between a humanities major and a "practical" major, the real variable isn't the major — it's what you do with it. A history major with internships, professional experience, and a clear narrative for employers consistently outperforms a business major with no record of accomplishment.

What This Means for Students Right Now

If you're trying to choose a major, these numbers are context, not a verdict. A few things worth knowing:

The earnings picture is complicated. Humanities majors rank at the lower end of early-career salary data, but mid-career outcomes for people who pursue further credentials or build specialized skills are meaningfully better. The ROI on a college major varies enormously by what you do after graduation, not just what you studied.

Program cuts are a real risk. Several states — including South Carolina — have moved to defund or eliminate non-STEM majors at public universities in recent years. If you're planning a humanities degree at a state school, check whether your department has faced budget pressure. A program that's shrinking may have fewer faculty, fewer course offerings, and less career support by the time you graduate.

AI anxiety is pushing students to change course. A recent Gallup survey found a significant number of college students have changed or are reconsidering their majors because of AI. Some of that pivot is rational; some of it is panic. AI literacy matters, but it's a skill you can build on top of a humanities degree — not a replacement for it.

The major you choose matters less than what you build alongside it. The earnings gap between what school you attend and what you major in is real, but both are secondary to work experience, professional network, and graduate credentials. Choosing English over business doesn't doom you. Choosing either one and doing nothing else does.

If a department at your school has seen major enrollment cuts, ask the registrar or department chair directly about program stability before you declare. A program facing elimination won't always advertise that to incoming students.

If You're Considering a Humanities Major

A few practical steps:

  1. Check what the program's graduates actually do. Most departments publish alumni outcomes or career paths. If they don't, that's a data point.
  2. Plan your second credential now. Law school, journalism programs, public policy degrees, and MBA programs all enroll significant numbers of humanities graduates. Know the path before you commit.
  3. Build hard skills alongside your coursework. Data literacy, proficiency in a foreign language, coding basics, or professional writing credentials all address the "what can you do?" question that employers ask humanities candidates most often.
  4. Visit what is a liberal arts college if you're weighing a liberal arts school — that framing affects job placement infrastructure, alumni networks, and how your degree is perceived by different types of employers.

The 30% decline in humanities degrees is a real trend. The 0.4% decline in the most recent year is also real. Both matter for how you read this moment — and what you do next.

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Footnotes

  1. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (2026). Humanities Indicators: Bachelor's Degrees in the Humanities. https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/higher-education ↩

  2. Inside Higher Ed. (2026, September 10). Report: Humanities Majors Disappearing. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2026/09/10/report-humanities-majors-disappearing ↩