Not Just Hobbies: Why Humanities Majors Matter

Written by Siena Griffin | Designed by Poppy Livingstone | Photographed by Chika Okoye

In a culture that views STEM as the only way to succeed, it’s time to give humanities the appreciation they deserve.

For students who aspire to be anything other than a doctor, engineer, or CEO, having the “what’s your major?” chat with family members can be a dreaded interaction. Humanities majors like history, literature, and philosophy are often dismissed as impractical compared to majors in math or science. But despite the hasty assumptions of concerned relatives, the humanities are not just hobbies: they are essential in building a functioning society.

Humanities are academic disciplines that study human culture and society; they include subjects such as languages, art, music, media and cultural studies, and more. These disciplines help us “understand and interpret the human experience,” according to the National Humanities Center. Despite the critical perspective and crucial understanding of the world that humanities provide, our culture portrays STEM as the only path to success, leaving the humanities undervalued.

“[People] don’t realize that there is theory and rigor to [the humanities],” said Kathryn Lakin (CAS ‘25), who is pursuing a major in English and a minor in Spanish. “It’s a different type of critical thinking, but it is still critical thinking… it requires following a line of reasoning in a way that isn’t always the case with STEM fields.”

The National Center for Education Statistics reported a vast decrease in the number of students graduating with humanities degrees over the past decade, with drops ranging from 33% in Languages and Literature to 50% in English. Meanwhile, the number of STEM degrees awarded shot up. English and arts departments, from elementary schools to universities, face budget cuts or erasure, while STEM programs grow.

Misconceptions about the humanities—such as that they offer vague career paths and less lucrative jobs—lead many to believe that STEM is the more respectable field. However, the STEM-humanities feud only serves to put in opposition two equally important areas of knowledge.

“I think that’s what we should try to step away from: the ‘either-or,’ the ‘this one is better, so that one must be worse,’” said Alice Tseng, Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Humanities. “It’s not a matter of one [field] being more important than another; it’s that you have to get a balance of everything.”

Much of the stigma around humanities majors derives from a perceived lack of job prospects. The decline in humanities majors and concurrent rise in STEM majors following the 2008 financial crisis reinforces this theory, says The Atlantic. However, declining numbers of humanities students do not reflect the disciplines’ importance, but rather what students think they should pursue if they want to make money—usually STEM fields.

“Humanities majors do have lower starting salaries, but by the time you’ve been working for a while, they are comparable with other majors in sciences and even STEM,” said Lakin. Lakin added that some people who study the humanities end up in seemingly non-humanities fields, noting that the founder of the messaging app Slack, Stewart Butterfield, earned degrees in Philosophy.

Misbeliefs about the value of humanities gain traction in college settings as divides between areas of study become more apparent. Subtle remarks imply that humanities students enjoy easy workloads or are destined for low-paying jobs, but these jabs are not harmless. Stereotypes about humanities majors perpetuate the notion that students in these fields will contribute less to the world than their STEM peers. They also enforce the view that being science- or mathsmart, opposed to being gifted at English or history, equates to overall intelligence.

“The joke is always PoliSci majors laying in bed all day as their Bio major roommate is running around curing cancer,” said Kimia Malkami (CAS ‘26), a Political Science and Cinema and Media Studies double major. “While I think a lot of it is a joke, I definitely think people see humanities as lesser because it is a degree that has less direction [than a STEM degree].”

The humanities are not obsolete, especially when humanities majors comprise a substantial portion of Boston University’s student body. According to Data USA, 15% of BU’s Class of 2020 graduated with Communication degrees, making it the second most popular degree concentration that year, behind Business. An additional 8% of the class received degrees in other humanities subjects, from Linguistics to Art History.

A humanities education benefits even nonmajors—it encourages critical thinking skills and may reveal underlying interests in new subjects. The BU Hub, the university’s general education program, mandates that students take courses outside their major, which means STEM students must take humanities courses in order to graduate.

“A lot of them walk out much happier that they made that choice of taking [a humanities] class, even if at first it felt like it was something they had to do,” said Tseng, who teaches courses in Japanese Art and Architecture.

BU’s Center for the Humanities aims to foster connections within the humanities community and among those in both humanities and nonhumanities fields. The center also presents opportunities in the humanities such as scholarships, fellowships, and grants.

“[Humanities] teach you how to view these problems and see the big ideas and threads and connections that go throughout history or literature,” said Lakin, an office assistant at the Center for the Humanities, about the importance of these resources, “and you can apply that to anything in your life.”

Ancient Greek philosophy, Renaissance art, Victorian literature—historical societies revolved around the humanities, for it was these disciplines that enriched their lives. Humanities of the past continue to shape our cultures and influence the world as we know it. Ultimately, we rely just as much on the humanities as we do on STEM—society’s perception of humanities just needs to elevate to reflect it.

“[The humanities are] about people and how people express themselves, how people think, how people communicate,” said Tseng. “So how can we not think that humanities are important? That’s our everyday existence.”