Happy graduation, humanities students! “Better a few good scholars than many indifferent ones.”

You embody the meaning of George Washington’s mandate to James McHenry, to paraphrase: it is infinitely better to have a few good scholars, than many indifferent ones.

For the number of humanities majors has now decreased to the lowest level in a dozen years, and they constitute the lowest percentage on record of undergraduate decrees conferred. From the statistical analysis: 

The natural and social sciences are the only fields whose shares of all bachelor’s degrees awarded were higher in 2014 than a decade earlier. While all the other fields experienced some loss in the share of degrees conferred, the humanities experienced the largest proportional decline. 

See also the analysis of these data by Robert Townshend here.