Majors

This page is designed for exploring trends in Swarthmore majors over time.  A set of three interactive charts are below. (Click chart name in its description to jump to it.)

We are still developing these presentations and very much welcome your feedback and suggestions.

For information about trends in disciplines in the population you may be interested in reviewing the National Center for Education Statistics' "The Condition of Education," which has a section on "Undergraduate Degree Fields."  There have been many articles in the higher ed press and from discipline-based associations, (some contradictory!) about the current state and future of different fields, for example Engineering, English, History, Psychology, the Humanities, STEM,  and even interdisciplinarity.  The composition of Economics  majors can be explored at this website.  (Swarthmore's Professor of Economics Amanda Bayer was part of the team that developed it, a project that was based on a study she coauthored about the race, ethnicity, and gender of economics majors.)    It is helpful to consider both external and internal data in our planning.

 

Swarthmore College Majors (detail)

 

Swarthmore - Pathways from and to Majors' Divisions

Peer Institutions and Majors (Swarthmore Fields)

The charts below present data on graduation majors (corresponding to the extent practical to Swarthmore majors) for Swarthmore and peer institutions.  You can select the majors you wish to include in the total and the institutions you wish to have presented.  (The charts works best if you limit the number of institutions selected to 15 or fewer.) Institutions included for selection are generally private not-for-profit baccalaureate institutions with between 1,000 and 5,000 students, and a Carnegie Classification of "Baccalaureate Colleges: Arts and Sciences Focus."  Data are shown for the Class of 2010 (light blue) and the Class of 2019 (dark blue).

Peer Selection - You can limit the peer institution selection options (for easier navigation) by selecting the peer categories at the top.  Always select Swarthmore.  "Key peers" are the six institutions we use for many internal presentations.  "Peers" are a group of another 25 similar institutions. "Other Small Liberal Arts College" are the remaining institutions meeting the criteria noted above.

Majors -The bars show the total of the selected major fields at the institution - either as a number (top chart) or percentage of all graduates (bottom chart).  Students with more than one major are represented in each of their majors.  Therefore the total of all majors may be greater than 100% of the Bachelor's degree recipients.  For more information about major fields, select the "Read Me" tab.