Big C said:
wifeisafurd said:
Interestingly, with only 9% of Harvard undergrads as liberal arts majors, if is bordering on (if you throw out the UK and Ireland) the European countries which separate out what colleges emphasize. For example, in France, there are universities which are liberal arts, and and Higher Schools ("Grandes Ecoles") which offer scientific and management curricula. Demand for universities have dropped, while Higher Schools keep adding qualifications to make admissions tougher. For example, you now need English proficiency (and they mean very proficient) and have to be typically in the top 10% of all students. So many European countries also are seeing much greater demand to go to scientific and management colleges.
It should be noted there still are major differences: the general view in most of Europe is that college is not for the common person, but only top students, is focused on your chosen area, the may be on tuition or low tuition (relative to the US, UK and Ireland) and does not include sports, living at school, greek systems, etc. There often also is a focus on trade or vocation schools, such as in hospitality. Also there seems a desire to have large numbers of international students. For example in Switzerland , 27% of the MBAs and 52% of the PHD grads are international students, who are rigorously recruited by Swiss employers.
What are some of the top undergrad majors at Harvard that comprise this 90+ percent that aren't liberal arts?
Here some relevant language from the article "In 2022, though, a survey found that only seven per cent of Harvard freshmen planned to major in the humanities, down from twenty per cent in 2012, and nearly thirty per cent during the nineteen-seventies. From fifteen years ago to the start of the pandemic, the number of Harvard English majors reportedly declined by about three-quartersin 2020, there were fewer than sixty at a college of more than seven thousandand philosophy and foreign literatures also sustained losses. (For bureaucratic reasons, Harvard doesn't count history as a humanity, but the trend holds.) "We feel we're on the Titanic," a senior professor in the English department told me."
That doesn't tell you what they major in. This is not 2026 class (2022 freshman), but here the majors for 2021 grads, which is the latest numbers I could find for STEM like majors with percentages being of the 2026 class:
Econometrics and quantitative economics9.4% (future fund managers?)
Computer science8.4%
Applied mathematics5.1%
Mathematics4%
Neuroscience3.8%
Experimental psychology3.7%
Evolutionary biology3.6%
Statistics 3%
Physics2.3%
Natural sciences2.2%
Developmental biology and embryology2.1%
Cell/cellular and molecular biology1.8%
Engineering science1.4%
Chemistry1.4%
Philosophy1.3%
Environmental studies1.2%
Chemistry1.1%
Anthropology1.1%
Linguistics0.7%
Mechanical engineering0.7%
Neurobiology and anatomy0.7%
Bioengineering and biomedical engineering0.5%
Astronomy and astrophysics0.4%
Chemical physics0.4%
Electrical and electronics engineering0.3%
