Students avoid humanities in favour of vocational degrees. But are they wise?

UCAS statistics reveal that applications to study subjects like law, teaching and accounting increased this year, whilst interest in courses in English, history, classics and philosophy reduced. Applicants are, it appears, increasingly choosing subjects that they think will offer them the best chance of a guaranteed career. However, humanities courses have always helped prepare students for jobs, via the transferable skills learned during them. The majority of graduate-entry jobs are, as always, open to graduates of any discipline.


This year, the biggest increase was for teaching-related degrees - 95,172 applications. Other increases: law - up 4.8%, business and administration studies - up 6.5% Decreases in applications: linguistics and classics subjects (including English) – down 4.1%, history, archaeology, philosophy and theology courses – down 1.7% and European language courses - down 0.6%.
Meanwhile, courses themselves are increasing or decreasing in number from next year, for example: accountancy courses will increase from 656 to 686 next year. Universities will reduce the number of courses they offer in humanities subjects, for example: English literature: 882 courses – down to 867 courses and history 2,291 courses: down to 2,281.