Revenge of the English Majors

For decades, if we wanted a student to have a great chance of a successful (and prosperous) career, we generally steered them toward STEM. That was where the jobs and the money were. The humanities were something you studied if you could afford to, or if you were so passionate about it the money simply didn’t matter to you.

Reality supported this advice for a long time. Coming out of college, a computer science major typically earned more than an English major. Many schools, noting this, shifted their money to the technical side.

I felt this dynamic in my early years as well. Initially I wanted to be a philosophy major, believe it or not. What I couldn’t figure out is how that degree would ever earn me a living. So I instead went into electrical engineering. I don’t regret that decision at all. Personal computers hit the scene when I was a teen, and I was interested in them too. But I do vividly remember feeling the tension between the humanities on one side and technical learning on t…