Humanities goes up once in college.

Inside Higher Ed reports.

Analysis considers contradictions in high school and college students’ interest in humanities

Humanities professors spend a lot of time debating trends in humanities enrollments. Are they really down or does it just seem that way because women have more options than they did a few generations ago? Is interest down or are students being scared off by (generally ill-informed) stereotypes that today’s English major is tomorrow’s barista? Are data being collected by colleges to really understand the humanities or to look for reasons to gut programs?

A new analysis published late Monday by the Humanities Indicators Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences may point to a key paradox for those trying to predict the future behavior of college students. The data show a decline in the proportion of high school students (as they take the SAT and as they prepare to graduate) who say they plan to major in the humanities. But something seems to be happening to those students when they actually enroll in college — and interest in majoring in the humanities goes up.

First consider the bad news (from the perspective of humanities advocates). The table that follows comes from a survey of college-bound high school seniors (the Freshman Survey, a national study by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles) and a survey of those taking the SAT.