Which college majors have exploded in popularity over the past decade and which have shrunk? Over the past two posts (#1, #2) I’ve discussed my analyses of the number of degrees awarded in various fields at US “R1” universities (“very high research activity”) between 2011 and 2021. I’ve wondered how I could convey the overall … Continue reading College Major Trends: The Movie
In my last post, I plotted trends in various college majors, comparing how the numbers of degrees awarded in a range of subjects have grown or shrunk over the decade 2011-2021. I compared my university, the University of Oregon, and other R1 (“Very high research activity”) universities. This post focuses on computer science and closely … Continue reading 10 Double the number of Computer Science majors / 20 GOTO 10
About four years ago, I looked into data on how US college students’ choice of majors had changed since 2011 and whether the University of Oregon (UO) differs notably from other R1 (Carnegie “Very High Research Activity”) universities. The old post is here, but there’s no need to look at it. I’m now revisiting this … Continue reading Majors at [Your Ad Here] U. of Oregon, 2011-2021
Four years ago, I read Bryan Caplan’s The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, a polemic about the form of education in the U.S. I disagreed strongly with a decent fraction of it, agreed strongly with a larger fraction of it, and overall found it stimulating — … Continue reading The Case For, and the Case Against, “The Case Against Education”
When I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997, non-California-residents made up about 10% of the undergraduate population [1]; the fraction now is 25% [2]. Here at the University of Oregon (UO), also a public university, out-of-state undergraduates are 44% of the student body. Why have these numbers increased so much at … Continue reading Graphs about out-of-state college students and money
What do I add to a first-year university physics class on simple harmonic motion? Anything? What’s the point of a class on simple harmonic motion? Why do first-year physics classes exist? I was thinking about these questions exactly six months ago, pre-pandemic, when I started writing a blog post that seems especially relevant now. I … Continue reading What’s the point of a first-year physics class?
There are now no bookstores around the University of Oregon (UO) campus. Until recently, there were two. The two did not, however, go out of business — at least not in a straightforward way. One of the stores is the University bookstore. At least since I moved to Eugene, 13 years ago, the uppermost of … Continue reading A bookstore-free university neighborhood
[Update, Feb. 4, 2023: See the new & improved version of this post, here!] A remarkable graph I came across a few weeks ago, copied below, shows the changes in the numbers of students majoring in various topics between 2011 and 2017. Part of an insightful article by Benjamin Schmidt titled “The History BA Since … Continue reading Local trends in college majors (Or: Do Oregon students choose offbeat degrees?)
![Majors at [Your Ad Here] U. of Oregon, 2011-2021](https://eighteenthelephant.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/bottle_redliquid_inset.png?w=256&h=256&crop=1)
The Eighteenth Elephant 