How economic logic is driving students’ subject choices—And why the humanities are losing out

Students enrolled in India’s higher education system increased 26.5% since 2014-15 to 4.33 crore, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education 2021-22. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for the 18-23 age group hit 28.4, the highest ever, and the number of female students surpassed 2.07 crore. However, there is a definite concentration of academic preference.

The Arts stream continues to have the highest percentage of undergraduate students (34.2%), followed by Science (14.8%) and Commerce (13.3%). However, there is a clear trend in postgraduate and professional education wherein engineering and technology now make up 11.8% of all undergraduate enrolment and nearly 25% of all doctoral students in PhD programmes.

A large portion of this change is being driven by private institutions, which currently make up 65.3% of all colleges in India. Their focus on revenue-linked academic programmes and placement outcomes has changed the aspirations of families and students alike. Even though they make up more than one-fifth of all institutions, government colleges, which historically supported the humanities through public subsidies, now only account for 34.8% of total enrolment.

Social and gender gradients of decline: Although women still make up the majority of students in the humanities, the gender balance in higher education is changing. Women currently have a slightly higher Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) than men, but as vocational and technical streams grow, their focus on the arts is gradually waning. Since 2014-15, enrolment for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes has also grown by 44% and 65%, respectively—the majority of these gains have been in science and commerce rather than the liberal arts disciplines.

The social composition of the humanities, which was once inclusive through public colleges, is now narrowing. Students from lower-income and rural backgrounds are moving to shorter, job-oriented degrees. Meanwhile, liberal arts have become concentrated in elite private universities with higher fees, creating an internal stratification between access and aspiration.

Global pattern of contraction: This trajectory is not exclusive to India, according to the UNESCO World Education Statistics (2024). Globally, the percentage of students enrolled in humanities programmes decreased between 2012 and 2022, while the percentage of students enrolled in STEM and applied fields increased to over one-third of all tertiary enrolments. These shifts are closely related to labour-market incentives and employment structures.

Even in the US, according to the Humanities Indicators Research Brief (2024), the percentage of bachelor’s degrees in the humanities fell from 14.3% in 1997 to 8.8% in 2022.

Financial aspects of academic selection: The root cause is a revaluation of risk rather than a decline in intellectual curiosity. The All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2021-2022 showed that 78.9% of Indian-students are enrolled in undergraduate programmes, and most families base these choices on employability results.

Education, therefore, for some becomes a means of risk management rather than exploration in economies where STEM graduates make 25–50% more than humanities graduates. This is supported by the growth of short-cycle vocational programmes in India, whose enrolment almost doubled between 2016-17 and 2022-23.

Unlike the open-ended uncertainty of a B.A. degree, these courses promise lower costs and faster employment. In such a setting, the humanities seem more like a luxury than a rung on a ladder.

Rethinking policy and value: All evidence points to a valuation problem rather than just a volume problem. To assist students in making educated decisions, nations must establish clear labour-market information systems. By combining real wage data with higher education statistics and incorporating it into university counselling and the National Education Policy (NEP) implementation frameworks, Indian education-policy thinkers could modify this.

Curricula that incorporate digital literacy, applied data methods and field-based research into liberal arts training will also be necessary to revitalise the humanities and ensure that employability and intellectual breadth are compatible.

Financing reform is equally important because 74% of undergraduates come from households with annual incomes under ₹5 lakh. Public apprenticeships and outcome-linked scholarships could make critical thinking a feasible rather than dangerous endeavour.

The decreasing proportion of students studying the humanities is a result of competing priorities rather than a decline in interest. Disciplines that foster introspection, interpretation and dissent are becoming less prevalent as universities adjust to markets and employability.

The humanities are not vanishing naturally. Rather, they are being displaced by policy design and market logic. Preserving them would be a defence of education’s democratic purpose, which is to produce citizens capable not only of earning but of understanding.

The authors are, respectively, professor and dean, O.P. Jindal Global University; and research analyst, Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES).