New data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) show that the number of students working toward a bachelor’s degree in the humanities continued to drop into the fall of 2025. In most humanities disciplines, majors were down by more than 22% since 2015, with the decline accelerating at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
Most of the data sources tracked by the Humanities Indicators focus on the degree completion trend, which is a lagging indicator, reflecting decisions made by students years before they earned the degree. Furthermore, degree counts from the U.S. Department of Education trail graduation by at least a year. In comparison, NSC data offer insights into the interests of students currently enrolled in bachelor’s degree programs across the country.
The data reveal that the number of students working toward a bachelor’s degree in the humanities (as their first major) declined each year from fall 2015 to fall 2025, dropping from 556,369 to 398,589—an overall decline of 28% (Figure 1).1 The “general liberal arts” category experienced an even steeper decline, with enrollments dropping 32%, from 681,940 majors to 465,550. These declines are far more dramatic than those seen in other fields, with the fine and performing arts down just 1%, education 7%, and fields in the “Other” category (mostly professional and vocational subjects) down 9%. Every other field experienced at least a modest increase in majors. The most substantial increase, 32%, was in the number of students working toward an engineering degree (including computer science students), which rose from 926,880 to 1,223,577 over the time period.
Perhaps most worrisome for the field, the decline of enrolled humanities majors picked up speed during the COVID pandemic. From 2016 to 2019, the annual decline in the number of humanities majors averaged slightly less than 2% per year. But in fall 2020 enrollment declined 6.2%—a substantially larger decline than in any other field except the general liberal arts and the worst decline for the field over the 2015–2025 time period. After fall 2020 the declines were substantially larger than before the pandemic—averaging 3.8% per year, even as most of the other fields that experienced declines bounced back. From 2020 to 2025, the humanities, along with the general liberal arts, experienced a decline of 17% in enrolled majors. In contrast, the numbers of enrolled majors in business, engineering, natural sciences, and health and medical sciences programs post-pandemic reached the highest levels recorded during the eleven years examined here.
Data Source: National Student Clearinghouse. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Humanities Indicators.
Within the humanities, only one discipline experienced a nonnegligible rise in enrolled majors from 2015 to 2025 (Figure 2). The number of students majoring in the humanistic study of the arts (which includes disciplines ranging from art history to film studies) increased 18% over the decade. Enrollment increased virtually every year up through 2024, with only a slight drop the following year.
Among the other humanities disciplines, the largest percentage decrease occurred among religion majors, with enrollments dropping to half the 2015 level by 2025 (6,603 compared to 13,121 a decade earlier). In every other humanities discipline that experienced decline, enrollments fell by at least 23%.2
As shown in Figure 2, the trajectories of some humanities disciplines changed significantly in recent years. After falling sharply from 2015 to 2022, the number of students pursuing a degree in religion plateaued at around 6,700 majors over the next three years. And after several years of decline, philosophy enrollments increased in 2024 and 2025, bringing enrollment back up to its 2015 level. In cultural, ethnic, and gender studies, the number of enrolled majors had been rising modestly before the pandemic but started to decline in 2020 and then fell sharply after 2023, dropping 18% by 2025.
Data Source: National Student Clearinghouse. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Humanities Indicators.
The largest decline in absolute numbers occurred in communication, with a drop of over 56,000 enrolled majors from 2015 to 2025 (183,476 down to 127,279). Enrollments in English language and literature programs had the next largest decline, also more than 50,000 students (dropping from 144,370 to 92,329).
The reasons for the recent acceleration in the decline of students majoring in the humanities are not entirely clear, though additional research conducted by the Humanities Indicators suggests that concerns about employability, the effects of high-stakes standardized testing in humanities subjects, and decreasing interest among young people in teaching as a career are contributing to the trend. What is clear, however, is that the decline is dramatic. Humanities degree seekers as a share of all students pursuing a bachelor’s degree contracted from 6.6% in 2015 to just 4.8% in 2025. Consequently, it is not surprising that the number and share of students earning degrees in most of the humanities disciplines have also declined. As the number of students working toward humanities degrees continues to drop, colleges and universities can expect further declines in humanities degree completions.