Education Brief
Virginia students pivot to STEM, health degrees
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Virginia college students are increasingly opting to study STEM and health-related fields, according to a review of state data.
Why it matters: The shift suggests that today's students are increasingly prioritizing future job security and pay over a broad liberal arts education — once the sole reason students pursued higher education.
State of play: Business or business administration has been the most popular undergrad degree for Virginia public university students nearly every year since the early 1990s — and it was last year, per data from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
Yes, but: Beginning roughly 20 years ago, and accelerating in the last 10, students increasingly started moving toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and health fields.
- And along the way, they've been dropping traditional humanities studies.
You can blame the Great Recession for the drop in students studying humanities, like English lit, history, philosophy and languages, according to education pub The Hechinger Report.
- Going back to the 1950s, the most popular undergrad majors tend to follow the broader economy, Hechinger reports. When it's booming, students flock to the humanities. When it's not (see also the 1970s), career-oriented majors surge in popularity.
- However, with the 2005 recession, students left the humanities and never returned.
By the numbers: In 2004-05, Virginia public university students earned 6,700 STEM-related bachelor's degrees (like engineering, computer science, biology, and health), per SCHEV data.
- In 2014-15, they awarded early twice that: 11,196.
- Last year, it was 14,100.
- Meanwhile, the number of humanities bachelor's degrees awarded by the state's public universities dropped by more than 2,000 in the last 20 years.
Zoom out: Nationwide, the share of students graduating with degrees in the humanities dropped by 24% between 2012 and 2022, per the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- The number of bachelor's degrees awarded in computer science more than doubled over the same period.
Zoom in: The shift can be seen across the state's public universities.
- Health was the top graduating major for undergrads last year at JMU and Radford; 20 years ago, business was the top major for both.
- While business degrees still dominate at George Mason and Virginia Tech — the state's largest schools — the number of computer science degrees they're awarding has more than doubled in the last decade.
- Even traditionally more liberal arts-focused schools have shifted. Business was the top graduating degree last year for Mary Washington and Longwood. A decade ago, it was social sciences and liberal arts.
What we're watching: If AI could threaten the future jobs of these STEM grads — or if their frequent use of the tech while still in school, as a recent Virginia Tech study found, makes them better positioned to harness it in their careers.