> In my mind the second hypothesis is the most important. One rough way to test this hypothesis would be to look at whether the decline in history majors across the United States is also seen at elite institutions. If 1) degrees are primarily a social signal, 2) the value of that signal is declining as a larger percentage of the population goes to college, and 3) employers have thus shifted to selecting on majors to separate wheat from chaff, it follows that students attending selective Ivy League institutions will feel less pressure to choose majors that signal their intelligence and discipline. University attendance may no longer be a mark of exclusivity; Harvard attendance certainly still is.
> I turned to the U.S. News and World Report for data on this point. Behold: approximately one in ten Harvard undergraduates major in history. Between 6% and 7% of the undergraduates at Yale and Princeton do the same—approximately the same percentage as the national rates in the 1970s.
> I turned to the U.S. News and World Report for data on this point. Behold: approximately one in ten Harvard undergraduates major in history. Between 6% and 7% of the undergraduates at Yale and Princeton do the same—approximately the same percentage as the national rates in the 1970s.