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I believe history, philosophy, classics etc are still reasonable IQ proxies- dummies get degrees in, like, English or something that wouldn’t have been recognized as a fit subject for academic study in 1900.
If you look at the stats, English majors aren't half bad. Their average SAT score of 1143 (in the 2023 data, latest I could find quickly) doesn't beat Engineering majors (1174) or Mathematics-and-statistics majors (1269, which includes beating the English majors' average on the English subtest) ... but it's nearly tied with Philosophy-and-religious-studies, it's consistently ahead of general History, and it's a step above many of the "or something" options. The "you're going to be working with your hands" majors tend to fall below the "you're going to be manipulating symbols" majors on the "how good are you at manipulating symbols" test, unsurprisingly, but among the symbol-manipulation majors there's also some sad showings from: Area, ethnic, cultural, and gender studies (991, and seemingly dropping fast over the preceding years!?), Family and consumer sciences/human sciences (971), and everyone's (least) favorite ironically low average score, Education (1023).
Hasn't enrollment in English programs actually dropped in the last few decades? Despite meme status (I assume from Avenue Q), the folks I know who are passionate about the English language specifically tend to be surprisingly focused --- one carries around a print copy of the complete works of Shakespeare wherever he goes. I think anyone looking for an "easy" major without concern for career prospects ends up in the ones you listed at the bottom. Sadly, that doesn't mean the employment prospects for English majors are actually much better.
Apparently so! From a peak of 55K Bachelors' degrees per year in the late 2000s down to 40K in 2017-2018 (the latest data I could quickly find).
This was sadly less surprising to double-check. Among new graduates, they were looking at 4.9% unemployment, 48.6% underemployment in 2023.
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Oxford has had an English department since 1894.
Yes, that’s why I said ‘or’. They didn’t have a psychology or communications department.
Ah, I was taking it idiomatically meaning English was included in the category
If only he'd taken English at Oxford...
(actually I'd use a dash there, but still)
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I think hydro meant "English" or "something that wouldn't have been recognized pre-1900" as two distinct options.
I hope so, though "dummies get degrees in English" makes me go 😐 as a wordcel (granted, I have no degree in anything, so what do I know?)
I'm apparently wrong about that one; my assumption had been that smart wordcels took classics degrees(IIRC classics and philosophy have average IQ's on par with the physics department) but apparently English is as rigorous as history and most of the 'Mrs. degree' and 'what degree doesn't require math?' type switch to psychology or ethnic studies.
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