From 1971 to 2006, these degree-granting disciplines experienced the biggest drops in the proportion of four-year colleges that offered them.
| Field |
% of colleges offering the field, 1971 |
% of colleges offering the field, 2006 |
Percentage-point decline |
| Core fields (offered by more than 50 percent of colleges in 1970-71) |
| Romance languages/literatures |
75.6% |
58.6% |
17.0 |
| History |
91.6% |
81.6% |
10.0 |
| Sociology |
77.1% |
67.7% |
9.4 |
| Mathematics and statistics |
89.5% |
80.3% |
9.3 |
| English |
94.7% |
86.0% |
8.7 |
| Chemistry |
80.3% |
72.6% |
7.7 |
| Economics |
56.0% |
49.4% |
6.6 |
| Physics |
53.2% |
47.4% |
5.8 |
| Education: teaching and curriculum |
79.6% |
75.3% |
4.3 |
| Biology/life sciences |
88.5% |
84.7% |
3.8 |
| Mass fields (offered by 20 percent to 49 percent of colleges in 1970-71) |
| Germanic languages/literatures |
44.2% |
26.6% |
17.6 |
| Home economics/consumer science |
28.7% |
22.2% |
6.4 |
| Classical languages/literatures |
21.5% |
16.8% |
4.7 |
| Geography |
22.3% |
19.3% |
3 |
| Geology/earth sciences |
27.7% |
27.2% |
0.5 |
| Niche fields (offered by 5 percent to 19 percent of colleges in 1970-71) |
| Administrative assistant/secretarial science |
16.7% |
1.2% |
15.5 |
| Zoology |
10.8% |
4.1% |
6.7 |
| Library science |
6.6% |
0.7% |
5.9 |
| Slavic languages/literatures |
14.2% |
9.3% |
4.9 |
| Botany |
7.9% |
3.2% |
4.7 |
| Agronomy/crop science |
5.1% |
3.0% |
2.0 |
| Industrial engineering |
8.9% |
7.0% |
1.9 |
| Sources: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics; Steven Brint, Kristopher Proctor, Kerry Mulligan, Matthew B. Rotondi, and Robert A. Hanneman, authors of "Declining Academic Fields in U.S. Four-Year Colleges and Universities, 1970-2006" |
