Philosophy Major Retention Data
How many college graduates end up getting their undergraduate degree in the major they declared when they initially started college?
That’s one of the questions taken up in a new study, “From Matriculation to Completion: How College Students Move Between Majors.” The study is by Humanities Indicators, based on an analysis by National Student Clearinghouse, and focuses on students who entered college in 2017.
The study asked “whether college students who start a humanities degree are more or less likely to finish it than those who start other majors, and how the movement into and out of humanities majors compares to those of other fields of study.”
It looked both at broad categories (e.g., humanities, natural sciences, engineering, business, etc.) as well as individual majors within the humanities. Among its findings regarding the humanities as a whole:
- Almost two million students started working toward a bachelor’s degree in fall 2017; of that number, 91,751 (4.6%) selected a primary major in one of the humanities disciplines. An average of around 7.5% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded from 2017 to 2022 were in the humanities. The difference between matriculations and degrees is explained by the humanities gaining more majors from other fields than it lost to either attrition or its own students switching to another major.
- Students who start their studies in a humanities discipline are slightly more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree within seven years than college students generally (and even more likely to do so if they completed an associate’s degree before starting at a four-year institution).
- Among students who completed a degree in a humanities discipline, more than half (55%) had started their studies in another major—either a nonhumanities field or a general liberal arts major.
- Of the almost 92,000 students who began their studies with a major in the humanities, 49,808 (54%) finished with a degree in the humanities. This was slightly below the rates at which students completed their degree in their original major in other fields, including in engineering (58%) and business (57%), but similar to the rates for students starting in the arts, social and behavioral sciences, and health and medical sciences. The humanities’ rate was substantially higher than that of education or the natural sciences (both around 46%).
What about particular majors? The following table shows the proportion of students who stuck with or switched out of their majors (both primary and secondary majors were taken into account).
Retention rates among degree completers who matriculated with a primary major in the humanities, by discipline (Fall 2017 Cohort, status as of Summer 2023). From “From Matriculation to Completion: How Do Humanities Majors Compare?” by Humanities Indicators
As you can see, only 57% of the graduating students who started college declaring a major in philosophy ended up getting their BA in philosophy, while 12% switched to another humanities field, and 32% switched to a non-humanities field.
Seven of the eleven humanities fields studied are better at retaining their majors than philosophy, with communication, English, and History doing the best (around 70% retention).
This raises questions about what undergraduate philosophy programs can do to better keep their majors from switching to other disciplines.
The study also looked at the relationship between first and second majors. It reports that only 9% of students graduate with a second major. Around 16% of those second majors are in a humanities field. And those who are majoring in a humanities field are more likely than students in other areas to have a second major.
You can view the whole report here.
(via Robert Townsend)
I belive it’s kind of a badge of honor for philosophy as a whole ( that is, 32% switching to a non-humanities field). It just shows that people who fall in love with philosophy are more multi-faceted individuals, in general, compared to other big humanities majors. Sure, it doesn’t keep the lights on in the departments but it is still a worthy point to consider.
Of course, students have taken English and History courses through primary and secondary school and so have a clearer idea of what they are getting into when they start those majors. To be sure, these subjects are different at a college level, but still students have a clearer idea of what they are. By contrast, many students’ ideas of philosophy are very different from what it actually is. Students should switch into majors that are a better fit for them. Of course, if we are scaring away students who would love to do philosophy, that is a serious problem. But to the extent that we are not, it may be better to find the students who would love to be a philosophy major, but don’t know what they are missing.
This is timely, since our department just got in trouble for local data showing Philosophy has the highest stop-out rate of any major on campus. But our rate is 60%, awfully close to the national 57% reported here.
Another factor to include in the discussion here is that, for us and perhaps many departments around the country, at least half of our majors do not select Philosophy as freshmen. These days most of our majors are transfers arriving with AA degrees.
It seems potentially misleading to track only the students who switched out of the field, and not the students who switched in! My understanding (which seems to be supported by some of the numbers here) is that more people switch into philosophy than switch out, but it would be helpful to see all of those numbers in a single place.