Swarthmore College is seeing significantly fewer seniors graduating with degrees in English over the last several decades but a growing number of STEM discipline majors, especially computer science, writes Owen Mortner for The Swarthmore Phoenix.  

In 1992, 62 Swarthmore seniors, nearly 17 percent of the graduating class, had degrees in English literature. 

Almost 30 years later, that number is below 20.  

In 2021, English majors were only 5 percent of the total graduating class, according to the college’s data.  

It’s really hard to disentangle,” said Professor Eric Song, who chairs Swarthmore’s English Department. “The big narrative is that at the national level there has been a strong emphasis on STEM education as being the way to train for gainful employment.”  

According to Song, Swarthmore’s English majors he knows are double majoring in computer science or another STEM discipline, a trend linked to finding well-paying jobs after college.  

 “I’ve seen and talked to students who are double majoring in English and computer science so they tell me things like ‘I have a job lined up in programming or something like that,’” he said. 

The trend isn’t isolated to Swarthmore. It’s a national migration.  

Nationally, English majors have declined more than 25.5 percent since the great recession.  

Read more at the Swarthmore Phoenix about the drop in English majors.