How circumstances shape life chances
While I cherish the idea of autonomy, life experience and research argue persuasively that my choices (while still choices) are rooted in the soil of where I was born, to whom, how I was raised and what it took to get away.
University majors and mental health
“Students who study humanities, social work and counselling were more likely to report childhood adversities, which are strongly associated with poor mental health” according to McLafferty et al. (2022) in the study ‘Variations in psychological disorders, suicidality, and help-seeking behaviour among college students from different academic disciplines‘.
The authors’ findings are not unique:
“A large, cross-sectional study spanning 81 American universities found that students studying art and design presented with the highest rates of mental illness. Almost 45% of art and design students reported at least one disorder, followed closely by humanities (39%). Art and humanities students also had the highest rates of suicidal ideation and over one fifth of students from these disciplines reported having engaged in self-injury” (McLafferty et al., 2022).
This seems entirely plausible.
Unfortunately, it also seems like the sort of thing that could be weaponized against already beleaguered arts and humanities courses and practitioners. Touchy-feely bull for people who can’t hack a real job, etc.
McLafferty et al. (2022) note:
“Disciplines demonstrating the lowest rates of mental illness included engineering (31%), public health (28%) nursing (28%) and business (27%). Likewise, a recent study conducted reported that students from arts and humanities, social work, and behavioural, and social sciences, were more likely to report emotional and substance use disorders in comparison to their peers from business or engineering disciplines.”
The bottom line
This suggests that pragmatic, socially desirable subjects attract composed, socially desirable students; with the obvious, if unarticulated, corollary that arts and humanities are for damaged bohemians who can’t hold it together long enough to learn quadratic equations or C++.
I can see why people might think that, and perhaps they’d be right.
Numerous studies find a strong correlation between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and their children’s academic achievement (Saifi & Mahmood, 2011; Azhar et al., 2014; Lam, 2014, etc.)
Academic disciplines such as engineering and health sciences are resource intensive. Ideally, students will have access to high-quality labs and IT equipment from primary school onwards. They will also have personal tech — laptops, tablets, etc. — that facilitates connection and learning.
Students from families lower on the socioeconomic scale are less likely to have personal technology, reliable home internet, and so forth. They are also more likely to go to underfunded schools where resources are limited.
Resources shape results
When I was in school in the early ‘90s we were lucky to have Bunsen burners and a counter on which to mix hydrogen peroxide and baking soda; my teachers wrote exam questions on the blackboard because the school couldn’t afford copy paper. My family could stretch to the graphing calculator required for advanced math classes, but I wouldn’t get my first laptop until 1999.
What I did have access to was books. One thing the United States is blessed with an abundance of is libraries (cheers, Mr Carnegie, I’ll not think too hard about how you made your money). Even my home town of Lincoln City, pop. 4800, had a substantial, well-stocked library with cozy reading spaces, stacks of periodicals and free activities. It was my refuge, my favorite place, a source of endless bounty.
Having a predilection for reading and writing, I also had a space where these were valued and supported. If I’d had a predilection for trigonometry or building radio cars, there would have been no such space or support.
Steered by circumstances
The Covid-19 pandemic threw learning inequalities into sharp relief:
“Children from families with a low SES are less likely to have access to remote learning (UNESCO, 2021), are less often provided with active learning assistance from their schools (Tomasik et al., 2020), and spend less time on learning (Meeter, 2021) than children from families with a high SES. Moreover, parents with a high SES are more likely to provide greater psychological support for their children (OECD, 2019),” reported Hammerstein et al. (2021).
Take an imaginative leap with me: A fourth or fifth grader has a nascent knack for programming. But they don’t have a computer at home, or they do, but share it with several family members and they can only afford a cheap, shaky internet connection. During the pandemic, this kid was out of school for 12, 18, 24 months, with minimal access to educators or learning materials.
They are fortunate that their fascination with the logic of computer language applies to English too. They do still have access to books and reading materials, and they’re sharp enough to learn to craft a strong essay or article by imitation.
They get back to school and the language arts teacher notices their progress, encourages them, makes sure they have access to the school library, gives them extra feedback on their writing.
Meanwhile, they’ve dropped behind their well-to-do peers in IT, simply because they haven’t had the tools or training. The IT teacher, like the language arts teacher, focuses their attention on the strongest students and fails to notice the lost potential of this particular kid.
The skillset that gets the most care and attention is the one that flourishes.
By the time university rolls around, this student is poised for success in the humanities, perhaps never to realize how financial circumstances subtly but ineluctably shaped their academic trajectory.
Self-fulfilling prophecies
It takes courage and gusto to shore up one’s weaknesses. In my head, I’m terrible at maths and mediocre at science (until maths gets involved, then I’m terrible at that too).
This self-perception solidified to fact in my head after I changed from a pre-med chemistry major to English Literature in my second year at Penn. It was wrenching to give up a long-held ambition of being a doctor, but my English and History professors were cajoling me to switch majors, and I was barely scraping by in science.
Telling myself I couldn’t hack maths and science was a self-soothing mechanism. However, like many palliatives, it may not have been entirely benign.
I took Algebra I and II, trigonometry and statistics, geometry, and calculus in high school: straight As (seasoned with tears of frustration); I also took earth science, chemistry, physics and biology: A, A, A and A. This rather complicates the couldn’t narrative. I’ve forgotten it now, but I did learn — even excel — at STEM in high school.
What broke me was the leap to university level, where chemistry became calculus and physics became flat-out terrifying.
If I’d had access to more challenging high school courses, would I have stayed on the pre-med track?
If I’d had greater self-confidence…?
If I’d been aware of the help available…?
The right decision for the wrong reasons
Am I happier as a writer and educator than I would have been as a cog in the moribund US healthcare system? No doubt.
But it would have been better to make that decision from a position of self-confidence and clarity, not overwhelming fear of failure.
When you grow up poor and see an escape, you will break a limb to leap.
When you feel excluded because of how you dress, where you live, what you can’t afford, you will do most anything to blend in.
When your financial situation has always been precarious, you crave security.
Failing classes, tanking your GPA, needing more time to graduate are actions that have different consequences for well-to-do students and those scraping by on scholarships, loans and work study jobs.
Links in a chain
Hard times are not merely socioeconomic. There are certainly young people from affluent backgrounds who have had adverse childhood experiences. But it would be wrong to discount the exacerbating effects of poverty on intimate partner violence, abuse, neglect, substance misuse, incarceration and mental health difficulties.
There are many ways poverty shapes people’s choices and chances, from birth onwards. Although it is illuminating to observe correlations between adversities and academic decisions, it is vital to interpret these studies with a view to how their insights can be used to better support learners (and educators). They are descriptions, not prescriptions; every person’s narrative contains an infinity of possible stories.
What are your experiences or observations regarding the relationship between study/career choice, mental health and socioeconomics? Please share your reflections in the comments.