AI challenges assumptions as humanities lose students

Humanities subjects are losing appeal among students, while the rise of artificial intelligence could overturn long-held assumptions about career prospects, Swiss public broadcaster SRF reports.

A study commissioned by the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences examined the development of student numbers in the humanities and social sciences from 1980 to 2024.

The number of students in these fields has more than tripled since 1980 as the population has grown. Their share of all university students, however, fell from 41 percent in 2004-05 to 28 percent in 2023-24. The main reason was the stronger growth of scientific and technical subjects.

Within the humanities, language and literature studies have recorded particularly sharp declines. Interest and personal aptitude remain the most important factors in choosing a degree, but career and income prospects have become increasingly important, especially since the pandemic.

“Some people said: Get rid of this rubbish at last,” said Lea Haller, co-secretary-general of the academy. Humanities subjects have often been portrayed as niche courses in which students mainly pursue self-fulfilment and which offer no benefit to the economy, she said.

The results vary considerably between subjects. Psychology, for example, is a rapidly growing field, Haller said. In contrast, there had been a “massive decline” in cultural, literature and language studies, she said.

Haller said the trend could be viewed critically. She described a worldwide collapse of educational humanism and said that, in the United States, research in the social sciences and humanities was now funded to a significant extent by private foundations such as the Mellon Foundation.

In Switzerland, substantial public funding also goes to science and technology subjects, known as STEM fields. “If reading and writing skills are neglected and humanities subjects are cut back at universities, a cultural asset is lost that cannot quickly be rebuilt later,” Haller said.

She linked the decline in subjects such as German, ethnology and English studies to fears of unemployment after graduation. In the 1980s, many people had been more likely to think, “I will study what I feel like studying,” Haller said. Today, uncertainty is greater, and young people are influenced by their surroundings and by media rhetoric when choosing a degree.

But the labour market has changed significantly in recent years. Artificial intelligence is transforming entire occupational fields, and choices once regarded as universally safe no longer offer the same certainty. Biology graduates once found jobs in the pharmaceutical industry immediately, Haller said, while entering the profession is now more difficult. Computer science is also no longer considered a guaranteed choice.

“Parents often advise their children to study medicine or mechanical engineering, when Romance studies would probably be the better recommendation,” Haller said. Schools were urgently looking for French teachers, she said.

Anna Leuenberger, a study and career adviser at the Bern cantonal career information service, said two questions were central: what interests, strengths and values a prospective student had, and what mattered to them in a future job. The latter was best explored by speaking with professionals and undertaking work placements, she said.

Even experts can scarcely predict what the labour market will look like when current students graduate or how strongly artificial intelligence will change it. Leuenberger said office-based work was likely to be more affected than jobs involving extensive contact with people.