Introduction

By Sara Mohr, Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow

Young people are the biggest stakeholders in their own education. Yet we know little about how current students approach key issues such as what courses to take, whether to attend college, and how these choices fit into broader goals for their personal and professional lives. Students have their own thought-out perspectives on the humanities, and they think about the field not only as part of their educational journey but also as part of their development as whole people. Bolstering our understanding of what draws students to or repels them from humanities education is key if the field is to flourish. To do so, the Humanities Indicators (HI) at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences contracted the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to conduct a series of interviews and focus groups with college and high school students.

The focus groups and interviews were designed to identify topics and themes that the HI hopes to explore more systematically in a future survey, which will yield nationally representative findings. However, these preliminary interviews offer important insights into the cross-currents and challenges facing the humanities as today’s students transition into and through college.

For this study, NORC first conducted four focus groups with high school students in April and May 2025—two in person and two virtually. The two virtual sessions featured one group of ninth- and tenth-grade students and one group of eleventh- and twelfth-grade students. They held an in-person session for ninth and tenth graders in Washington, D.C., and an in-person session for eleventh and twelfth graders in Chicago. From September to November 2025, NORC also conducted twenty-five in-depth virtual interviews with college students, focusing on students who were either undecided or were majoring in the humanities. For both the focus groups and the interviews, NORC recruited students across a variety of demographic dimensions, including gender, race, urbanicity, and parent education level. The students were asked to share their thoughts on five topics related to decisions about whether or not to major in the humanities:

• Reading and writing outside work or school;
• Favorite and least-favorite subjects in high school and college;
• The decision to attend college;
• What course(s) of study to pursue in college; and
• The perceived role and value of the humanities.