I gra­dua­ted from Uni­ver­si­ty in the mid-1980s. This was a boom time for the Huma­ni­ties and Social Sci­en­ces. I inscri­bed mys­elf at the phi­lo­so­phi­cal-histo­ri­cal Facul­ty of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ber­ne, and noted how most depart­ments were strugg­ling with the influx of young enthu­siasts like mys­elf hoping to get deeper insights into the evo­lu­ti­on and inner workings of some­thing cal­led “socie­ty” – not real­ly worry­ing too much about our employa­bi­li­ty and the mar­ke­ta­bi­li­ty of our know­ledge – which, in my case didn’t plea­se my grand­fa­ther, a sta­tus-ori­en­ted prag­ma­tist, who would have much pre­fer­red to see me in medi­ci­ne or law.

It is against this back­ground that I took inte­rest in a recent num­ber crun­ching exer­cise by the Swiss Aca­de­my of Huma­ni­ties and Social Sci­en­ces. The aca­de­my – for the first time – has loo­ked into enroll­ment in the Huma­ni­ties and Social Sci­en­ces in Swiss hig­her edu­ca­ti­on sin­ce the 1980s, and its report – “Stu­di­en­wahl. Zah­len und Trends in den Gei­stes- und Sozi­al­wis­sen­schaf­ten“ – was pre­sen­ted ear­lier this month.

If we let the­se num­bers speak: against a strong abso­lu­te and rela­ti­ve growth of the MINT dis­clipli­nes – that have recei­ved favorable poli­cy tre­at­ment – stu­dent enroll­ment in histo­ry, lan­guages, lite­ra­tu­re, anthro­po­lo­gy, phi­lo­so­phy – the tra­di­tio­nal core of the huma­ni­ties clu­ster – have shrunk both in rela­ti­ve (from 13% in 2003 to 4% in 2025) and in abso­lu­te terms. The lar­ger clu­ster of huma­ni­ties and social sci­en­ces still decrea­se, in rela­ti­ve terms, 41% in 2003 to 29% in 2025. Within that lar­ge chunk of disci­pli­nes, socio­lo­gy and psy­cho­lo­gy still thri­ve.

The report has an inte­re­st­ing chap­ter on “rele­vant moti­va­tions”. I find – per­haps unsur­pri­sin­gly – only litt­le chan­ge com­pared to my gene­ra­ti­on of huma­ni­ties stu­dents. The moti­va­tions the report says are “intrin­sic” – inte­rest, enthu­si­asm, the liber­ty of a wide open stu­dy field, social and poli­ti­cal enga­ge­ment. They are not based on money, sta­tus and the labor mar­ket.

Only that today, stu­dents seem to be more inse­cu­re about pro­s­pec­ti­ve employment. A care­er advi­sor inter­view­ed for the report thinks that the popu­la­ri­ty of socio­lo­gy and psy­cho­lo­gy stems from their empi­ri­cal approach, which helps to ease the anxie­ty cau­sed by the open­ness and ambi­gui­ties of the “inter­pre­ti­ve disci­pli­nes”. That’s an inte­re­st­ing hypo­the­sis on the psy­cho­lo­gi­cal effect of the­se more gene­ra­li­zing stu­dy are­as on stu­dents – are­as that do not requi­re the “acqui­si­ti­on of a regio­nal lan­guage or the pre­sence in a local archi­ve”, as the Academy’s secre­ta­ry Ms. Lea Hal­ler is quo­ted as say­ing in the Tages-Anzei­ger. Over­all, she arti­cu­la­tes the hope that per­haps the abili­ty to ask the right que­sti­ons and to work out con­tex­tu­al mea­ning will help tho­se huma­ni­ty gra­dua­tes in a future shaped by Arti­fi­ci­al Intel­li­gence.

I don’t know.