In January 2026, the Humanities Indicators conducted three virtual focus groups with high school teachers and counselors from across the country to better understand how their students are thinking about the humanities as a field of college study. This research is part of a larger project to identify drivers of the decline in undergraduate degree completions in humanities disciplines. These conversations with a diverse group of secondary education professionals surfaced several factors that may be contributing to the downward trend in humanities degrees. Participants also identified low-cost strategies for fostering the sort of meaningful engagement with the humanities at the secondary level that might compel a student to pursue a major in the field.
Career Paths and the Economy
Study participants reported that students who were interested in pursuing college and their parents tended to focus on majors that lead to clear career paths and what students hope will be reliable incomes. As one counselor said, “For the conversations around the major, a lot of the questions we get early on are, ‘What do you do with said degree?’ And then immediately it goes to, ‘How much do you make with said degree?’” This led students to consider minoring in a humanities subject they felt passionately about but majoring in a subject they felt might get them a well-paying job.
The students that often want to continue with the humanities have found some kind of valuable solution or have found some success working with a real problem in the humanities.
STEM careers were more legible and desirable to students, as were careers in business and finance. For instance, one counselor reported that many students were interested in physician’s assistant and nurse practitioner pathways, with female students particularly interested in being ultrasound technicians: “I’m seeing a lot of our science kids head in that direction because they don’t want to go to medical school, but they do want to make money and they do want to help people. And so that bridges it for them.”
Teachers and counselors felt that this focus on return on investment in higher education was related in part to economic conditions and a growing sense that college, in and of itself, might not be “enough.” One counselor said, “It used to be that college generically was going to get you a job and that a college degree was going to mean that you were going to make more and do more. And now in this economy, I don’t know that people [parents] trust that anymore, especially people that haven’t been to college. They want to see what it’s going to return for them and for their child.”
Humanities Left Behind
Many participants saw attention as a limited resource and believed that initiatives to strengthen STEM education or other subjects at their school had resulted in reduced attention to humanities subjects.
One teacher’s school had heavily invested in math and sciences and built some “really great programs,” but “we in the old social studies and ELA departments are kind of being left behind in the dust.” One counselor told us that “Schools are requiring more and more, and colleges are requiring more and more. So a kid may not have time in his or her schedule to take some of those liberal arts classes that they used to be able to take back in our time.”
One teacher felt that his state government actively disincentivized humanities subjects via the policy regarding AP exams: “If I’m an AP student and I’m doing any STEM exam, the state will pay for that AP exam. If I’m doing history or Spanish or French or any of the humanities, they will not pay for that.” (This was not the case across the board, as other teachers told us their schools paid for AP tests in every subject or that their district would pay for one AP test per student per year in any subject.)
Several participants felt that the college admissions process also worked against students taking humanities classes. One counselor felt that colleges did not value humanities in the admissions process and thus students did not choose those courses in high school, even as electives: “Even if he or she wants to take more of those classes, he or she feels like, ‘I can’t, I have to take this other course because I need physics, even though I don’t have to take another science.’ They’re choosing physics over an arts class perhaps because the colleges tell them that that’s more rigorous, right? Looks better on there.”
Opportunities to Intervene
The emphasis on STEM and the marketability of a degree is not the only barrier to student engagement with the humanities. The impact of high-stakes standardized testing on humanities instruction also contributes. One teacher indicated that at her school, standardized testing has “sucked the joy out of literature” for students. Other teachers agreed and pointed to the way standardized testing required students to learn formulaic essay structures and terms rather than engage with literature in a creative way. Teachers and counselors described a variety of ways they address these challenges, ranging from light-lift strategies to more intensive programs like internships and community-engaged learning.
Showing students how humanities skills and knowledge can be applicable outside the classroom, they felt, was key to kids engaging with the humanities as college students. Some schools brought in distinguished alumni to talk with students about their own pathways, but one counselor realized in the course of the discussion, “Now that I’m thinking about it, I think we are contributing to your problem because we aren’t bringing in folks who are living liberal arts lives,” but felt it would be an easy fix. Also requiring further investment were internship opportunities in the humanities. Teachers at schools where internships were offered or required reported that they were rarely linked to the humanities.
Showing students how humanities skills and knowledge can be applicable outside the classroom, they felt, was key to kids engaging with the humanities as college students.
Another strategy used by teachers to expose students to humanities practice was field trips to local humanities institutions such as museums. Numerous teachers told us they relied on their own networks and initiative to connect with local museums and poetry events. But not every teacher possesses the cultural capital and time necessary to make those connections. Increased outreach from local institutions to high school teachers could promote more of this enrichment. As one teacher said, “I go to museums on the weekends, and every time I go, I say, hey, what exhibits you got? Can I bring some students? And they reply, absolutely do it. The funny thing is they want more kids to come to the museums. . . . All right, you could e-mail schools and do it. But again, it is pretty easy if you’re willing to take 11 little steps to get there.”
Extracurricular activities were also opportunities for students to connect with the humanities outside class. One teacher noted, “When there’s an extracurricular club, whether it’s the drama club or the debate team or youth in government programs, that then gets students thinking about careers in the humanities that might not have been apparent from history or an English class in their core curriculum.” Another teacher told us about a student who revived their dormant school newspaper with the help of an enthusiastic English teacher and is now going to university for journalism. Extracurricular activities were also spaces for students to rediscover their enjoyment of tested subjects like English.
Less common were project-based and community-engaged classroom programs that emphasized connections between humanities learning and impact in the world. At one school, however, students participated in community-engaged problem solving that boosted student interest in the humanities. “Each class,” the teacher explained,
connects with three or four different organizations out in the world and then works to come up with potential solutions for those problems. The students that often want to continue with the humanities have found some kind of valuable solution or have found some success working with a real problem in the humanities. And then have heard from a real person out in the world that that work is valuable and useful. And then want to keep doing more of that because they feel like they are talented or they have an interest or they want to keep going.
While most of the teachers and counselors were positive about these efforts to highlight the real-world applications of humanities skills, they were also wistful for a time when fewer demands were placed on students to specialize and be career focused so early on. One teacher expressed sadness that kids’ college experience was increasingly less about intellectual development of the sort that humanities education fosters: “I understand why students and families are really dialed into this idea of, you know, what is my career? What is my career? I wish we’d just let kids grow up, explore the world around them, engage with interesting ideas, make some mistakes, have some fun.”
Dwindling Interest in Teaching as a Career
An unexpected finding of the focus groups was the possibility that worsening working conditions for teachers are a factor in declining interest in humanities degrees. As one teacher said, “I think another big hit, at least in our state and our community, has been the number of kids that might have studied the humanities in college so that they could go back into education and become that English teacher, become that history teacher. And I just know we’re seeing a lot fewer younger people choose to teach, and we’re seeing a lot fewer student teachers. And I think it is a reasonable question. What do I do with a history degree if I’m not going to teach history?” Teaching was a legible career for students but a less desirable one. This trend is confirmed by national data indicating that first-year college students’ interest in teaching as a career has declined precipitously from 1970 to the present, creating a substantial challenge for the field in perpetuating itself.
Even the teachers participating in the focus groups, who very much believed in the humanities and in the value of their work as teachers, did not always recommend to their own students that they pursue teaching or the humanities because of their own experience with student debt. Many teachers and counselors mentioned telling students to get their degree in an affordable way. They encouraged students to perhaps start at a community college or avoid majors that they themselves had pursued.
Stemming the Tide
This study demonstrates that secondary educators can bring valuable insight to the conversation around the factors contributing to the drop in humanities degree completions and how the field can respond. Since its inception, the Humanities Indicators project has emphasized K-12 education, viewing the groundwork laid during those years as key to the vitality of the field. Students emerging from high school with a solid grasp of key humanities competencies, knowledge, and the wide range of employment opportunities available to them are those that will be choosing humanities courses and majors. This research makes clear that many students are thinking deeply about their college education well before they arrive on campus. Dialogue between secondary humanities educators and their counterparts in higher education about the barriers to student interest in the humanities—and ways to dismantle them—should be a component of any effort to reverse the trend in humanities degree completions.