STEM versus Humanities: My Major is Important Too

At my university I am many things. A student, a member of organizations on campus, and a tour guide. I have been giving tours for three out of my four years at my university and it’s something I’ve enjoyed very much. I am the student who families get to pick the brain of while they try to learn as much as they can about my school in a ninety minute span. But before this can happen, I have to have “the moment”. This “moment” is when I tell them my major. I am currently a Communications and Media major with a minor in Psychology at a STEM predominant university. The prospective students and families who I am speaking to are interested in fields such as Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. When I tell families my fields, most look at me as if I have suddenly transported them to a different school. Others laugh. Few don’t even bat an eye, mostly because their student is usually looking into a field related to mine, which is rare.

The first time the “moment” happened, I was hurt and discouraged. The father had laughed at me and asked what I was really studying, since he believed my university offered no such major. I then felt the need to explain why I was my major, what my future goals were, and why I had chosen to stay at my school before my tour had even started, which then lead to one of the worst tours I had ever given with the comments he had made during it haunting me for weeks. How has STEM overcome our lives to the point where if you’re not a STEM major, you are perceived as if something is wrong with you?

Before I even was thinking about college, all I was hearing was President Obama’s view that we were failing as a nation in STEM fields. It is well known that the United States in far behind compared to other countries in STEM education. According to the National Math and Science Initiative, we are ranked 27th in math and 20th in science in comparison to 34 other countries. There has been a push for more and more students to go into STEM fields when they go to college.

With the emphasis for students to focus on STEM has increased, students majoring in the humanities has fallen tremendously. Getting a degree now has a focus on how much money you can make with that degree instead of the education that comes with it. And universities have been focusing on how many students are employed after graduation and promoting this to their incoming students. (For those curious, my university has a 96% job placement rate.)

I recently received an email from the career services at my university offering their assistance to students in the School of Arts and Sciences as they “recognize the job search process in your major may need additional resources”, showing me that the job placement rate is important for my school. While these fields may be deemed “hard to find jobs in”, there are people who majored in the humanities in well known positions. People such as Bob Iger, the CEO of The Walt Disney Company was a Television and Radio major and Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate was an English major.

To the surprise of some, STEM and humanities are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are stronger together. While humanities are essential for engineers and scientists, STEM is equally important for arts and humanities students as well. By incorporating all of these fields together, with a STEAM approach, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math, it would help drive innovation and creativity in all students. So why do we look down upon students who choose to major in fields like Anthropology or Communications and praise Engineering students when we all rely on the knowledge of each other to help fuel how we think and approach situations. So instead of pitting Humanities against STEM, if an approach that combined these two fields together was implemented, it could help bolster critical thinking and communication skills for future students.