‘At least you’re not an English major’ | Off the Beat

I was floating in the air-conditioned utopia of the bookstore picking out a gift card for my niece when I noticed a graduation gift section.

I am old enough to have given birth to my student peers and will be the first in my family to graduate from university. I wondered if, when I graduate, someone would get me one of the quirky grad gifts displayed here.

Among the glittery pins, candles and a stuffed star with a smiley face, one book in particular caught my eye. The cover featured an illustration of someone drowning — their head wasn’t visible, but a graduation cap and hands clutching a rolled-up diploma poked through the water. “At Least You’re Not an English Major,” the cover read.

I stood beside the spinner rack and read.

It was a picture book for graduates that paired different majors with rhymes about each major’s weaknesses, all tied to the inevitability of AI. It did not end with boring platitudes — which I’m sure recent graduates are drowning in — but it felt excessively focused on the financial return of each degree rather than the importance of learning in general.

The drama unfolded in my mind: The book would spend the rest of its life in a landfill somewhere after one half-hearted read. In a worse version of my daydream, the graduate appreciates the picture book. They display it smugly. Why would anyone pick English when AI can read and write for us? Why not go into a field that actually makes money?

When my wrath subsided, I just wanted to understand. Why has majoring in English become comedic shorthand for wasting time on a “useless” degree?

Perhaps it’s because English degrees, unlike their peers, don’t seem to promise permanent financial security. But rapid developments in AI have made that security pretty elusive across the board. Most of us feel this — we can’t afford rent, let alone houses; a trip to the grocery store means we can’t afford shoes. Meanwhile, the tech industry enriches itself by straining the Earth’s resources to construct AI models and data centers.

If college is still the route to upward mobility, does avoiding the humanities really protect us?

When the cost of attendance is unbearably high, students rightfully want a return on their investment. We’ve been led to believe that an English degree fails to fulfill the promise of financial security college supposedly guarantees.

Meanwhile, it’s no secret the global literacy rate is declining. Data released in 2024 by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that 28% of U.S. adults were low-performing readers — up from 19% in 2017.

UC Berkeley is devoting massive amounts of resources to the same AI systems which threaten to worsen this crisis. This year, it cost $557 million to build a “dedicated campus hub for AI-driven discovery” at UC Berkeley, while our campus slashes courses and lecturers for ethnic studies. The human understanding, interpretation and schools of thought that flourish in humanities disciplines are just as vital to human progress as tech.

Today, UC Berkeley tuition alone for students entering in the 2026-27 school year is more than $18,000. It’s tempting to believe a job in a technical field is the route to security for years to come after spending that much money on credentials.

There’s a good rule of thumb for journalism, though: A story being easy to believe doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. The story everyone keeps telling themselves about the humanities needs an edit. The critical thinking and analytical skills you learn in English may not be tied to specific careers, but they are timeless.

We’re living in a country where lots of people feel half-baked. My goal in education isn’t to become a good little capitalist drone. In fact, I’m sick of the system we currently live in and are forced to perpetuate.

I don’t accept the fatalistic, “might as well” approach to being an English major, either — that AI is decimating every field so the decision to study English supposedly doesn’t matter. Instead, we should intentionally study the humanities specifically because we’re so unsure of what the future holds. Because the future is uncertain, it will serve us to focus on critical thinking, reasoning, cultural awareness, attention to detail, close reading and clear communication, skills that may go under-taught in STEM curricula.

These are widely adaptable skills that many people graduate college without having practiced. As we get further into the AI hellscape, these skills will become rarer, more valuable and more necessary to maintain our humanity.

Already, we’re seeing crowds of students boo the AI bootlickers speaking at their graduations; we’re seeing authors and artists in despair, warning about the dangers of unbridled AI use for our most fundamental creative endeavors.

Humans need stories, yet, ironically, belittle a major whose primary concern is interpreting, considering, telling and preserving stories. Little jokes dismissing the humanities as “useless” are bad for us. They stick to our teeth like plaque and linger, manifesting as judgment for and self-deprecation by English majors. Please understand — this attitude is optional.