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WASHINGTON â€" Search engine companies should more clearly distinguish on their Web pages between advertising, paid content and the results of an Internet search, the Federal Trade Commission told two dozen search engine providers on Tuesday.
The commission made the statements, which update guidelines first laid out in 2002, in a letter it sent to seven general search engine companies including Google, Bing and Yahoo, as well as to 17 specialized search sites that focus on travel, shopping and local businesses.
Saying that the commission has noticed a decline in compliance with its 2002 guidelines, Mary K. Engle, associate director for advertising practices, wrote that “to avoid the potential for deception, consumers should be able to easily distinguish a natural search result from advertising that a search engine delivers.â€
Ms. Engle cited a 2012 study by SEOBook, a search strategies company, which found that “nearly half of searchers did not recognize top ads as distinct from natural search results.†Top ads are advertisements that appear immediately above the list of search results.
Those ads are often set apart by background shading, to distinguish them from other search results. But the F.T.C. said that the shading was often too light and failed to differentiate the ads from nonpaid material. In addition, it warned, the formats used in one type of device â€" say, desktop browser pages â€" often did not work for different devices, like mobile smartphones.
Specialized search results â€" for example, from a search engine that focuses strictly on one industry, like airlines or hotels â€" are sometimes based at least in part on payments from a third party, the F.T.C. said. “If that is the case, it is also a form of advertising and should be identified as such to consumers,†the agency said.
The issue came up during last year’s F.T.C. investigation of Google, when other companies accused Google of displaying shopping results based not on what would best suit a customer, but rather on the potential return to Google.
In a statement, Google said Tuesday that “clear labeling and disclosure of paid results is important, and we’ve always strived to do that as our products have evolved.†Neither Google nor any other company was singled out in the F.T.C.’s letter as a potential violator.
The commission also said that advertisements should have text labels immediately before an ad or in the top left corner of a search box.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 26, 2013, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: F.T.C. Tells Search Engines To Label Advertising as Such .
John L. Dotson Jr., a prominent journalist who became one of the nation’s first African-American publishers of a general circulation daily newspaper and who guided the paper, The Akron Beacon Journal of Ohio, to a Pulitzer Prize for a series on race relations, died on Friday at his home in Boulder, Colo. He was 76.
John L. Dotson Jr.
The cause was mantle cell lymphoma, his son, John Dotson III, said.
When Mr. Dotson became president and publisher of The Journal in 1992, he had been a reporter for big-city newspapers, an editor at Newsweek, the publisher of a Colorado paper and a founder of an institute for minority journalists. Two years later The Journal won the Pulitzer for public service for the five-part series “A Question of Color.â€
The final installment solicited pledges from readers to fight racism; the names of 22,000 respondents were later published in a special supplement.
James Crutchfield, who succeeded Mr. Dotson as publisher, recalled in The Journal’s obituary that he had been concerned that the series might be too inflammatory. Mr. Dotson, who as a reporter covered the Detroit race riots of the 1960s, counseled him not to hold back.
“I felt we were pushing the envelope,†Mr. Crutchfield said. “We ended up pushing it even further.â€
In 1977, Mr. Dotson and eight other journalists, including Earl Caldwell and Dorothy Butler Gilliam, who were columnists for The Washington Post, and Robert C. Maynard, who was publisher and editor of The Oakland Tribune, founded a nonprofit organization devoted to training and expanding opportunities for minority journalists. Based in Oakland, Calif., it was renamed the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education after Mr. Maynard’s death in 1993.
Mr. Dotson spoke openly about the pressures on a black executive in a predominantly white industry and the guarded way he often dealt with white colleagues early on. “When I came along, I would get up in the morning and I would put on this armor and go to work,†he said in 2000 when interviewed by The New York Times for its series “How Race Is Lived in America,†which also won a Pulitzer.
Some colleagues saw him as cautious and alert to how he was perceived.
“I think it’s kind of funny how a lot of people in the newsroom, white people in the newsroom, think he bends over backwards to appease and please the black community and black reporters in the newsroom,†Carl Chancellor, who is black and a former columnist at The Journal, told The Times. “When I think if you polled the black people in the newsroom, they’d probably think that it’s the other way around.â€
Early in his career Mr. Dotson was a reporter for The Newark Evening News, The Detroit Free Press and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He joined Newsweek in 1965 and became a senior editor there. In 1983, he was named president and publisher of The Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo.
John Louis Dotson Jr. was born on Feb. 5, 1937, in Paterson, N.J., to John Dotson and the former Evelyn Nelson. He served as a lieutenant in the Army and received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Temple University in 1958.
Mr. Dotson served on the boards of The Washington Post and the Pulitzer Prizes, which are administered by Columbia University. He led a Pulitzer committee that studied whether to accept nominations for online journalism. Its proposal to do so was accepted and adopted by the Pulitzer board in 1997. He retired from The Beacon Journal in 2001 and was elected to the Hall of Fame of the National Association for Black Journalists in 2007.
In addition to his son John, he is survived by his wife, the former Peggy Burnett; another son, Christopher; a daughter, Leslie Van Every; a brother, Ronald; a sister, Beverly Spidey; and eight grandchildren. Mr. Dotson also had a home in Marco Island, Fla.
Gene Roberts, who as metropolitan editor of The Free Press in the 1960s hired Mr. Dotson, said on Monday that Mr. Dotson’s experience as a reporter had shaped his attitudes in the executive suite.
“John was very supportive of the newsroom,†said Mr. Roberts, who was later executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and managing editor of The Times, “and had a sensitivity and feeling about news and the role of a newspaper in democratic society that you wish more publishers had.â€
A TV commercial for Expedia about a father who travels to attend the wedding of his daughter to another woman.
WHEN Expedia decided to begin running on television this month a commercial it had introduced online in October, about a father’s trip to attend his daughter’s wedding to another woman, the media plan was drawn up to include Logo, the cable channel aimed at gay and lesbian viewers. But the commercial is also running on networks watched by general audiences, like CNN, History, MSNBC and the National Geographic Channel.
The Lucky Charms mascot at the Twin Cities Pride Family Picnic in St. Paul.
“As we were making our Web site more personal, we wanted to get back to the idea that travel is really personal,†said Sarah Gavin, director for public relations and social media at Expedia in Seattle, and “equality is a core part of who we are.â€
The Expedia decision is indicative of a significant change in how marketers are disseminating ads with so-called L.G.B.T. themes, for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. For the last two or three decades, such ads were usually aimed at L.G.B.T. consumers, placed in media those consumers watch and read, and then supplemented with tactics that included event marketing like floats in Pride Month parades.
Recently, however, L.G.B.T. ads have been getting broader exposure. While targeted media and events remain part of the game plan, they are also running in mainstream media that, in addition to general cable channels, include magazines like Family Circle, newspapers like The New York Times and social media like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube.
One goal is to reach families, friends and straight allies of L.G.B.T. consumers. “I have friends who are gay who said, ‘I sent this to my mother,’ ‘I sent this to my father,’ †Ms. Gavin said of the Expedia commercial, which was created by the Los Angeles office of 180, part of the Omnicom Group. “We wanted to start a conversation.â€
Another goal is to signal support for L.G.B.T. consumers as they seek civil rights in areas like immigration and marriage.
Although “niche media remain an important part of the mix,†said Billy Kolber, publisher and creative director of Man About World, a gay travel magazine for the iPad, “it’s more impactful when you see an ad in mainstream media because it says these companies are willing to offer public support.â€
The list of marketers that are casting a wider net with their L.G.B.T. ads reads like a Who’s Who of Madison Avenue. In addition to Expedia, they include Amazon, American Airlines, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bloomingdale’s, Crate & Barrel, Gap, General Mills, Google, Hyatt, JetBlue Airways, Kraft Foods, Johnson & Johnson, MasterCard, Microsoft, J. C. Penney and Redhook Ale Brewery.
“As society becomes more diverse, there’s more inclusive messaging, which reflects what society actually looks like,†said Michael Wilke, executive director of the AdRespect Advertising Educational Program, which works with marketers on L.G.B.T. representation in campaigns.
“It’s not about being inclusive to stand out,†he added. “It’s about being inclusive to blend in.â€
And “it’s particularly a no-brainer when you look at younger consumers,†Mr. Wilke said, who, according to polls, are far more accepting of diversity than their elders to the point where they expect to see ads that celebrate acceptance.
A play on words centered on “acceptance†is the focus of a campaign under way from MasterCard Worldwide, which offers a hashtag, #AcceptanceMatters, and includes material on Facebook along with Twitter.
“We think it will resonate with a lot of different people,†said JR Badian, vice president and senior business leader for U.S. digital marketing and social media at MasterCard Worldwide in Purchase, N.Y. “This gives us the opportunity to be targeted as well as bring the message to a larger audience.â€
The MasterCard campaign, which is being handled by R/GA in New York, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, is composed of social media and event marketing. “We’ll see how the conversation is liked and shared,†Mr. Badian said, “and if we could extend it out to traditional media.â€
Like MasterCard’s effort, an L.G.B.T. campaign for Lucky Charms cereal, sold by General Mills, is composed of social media and event marketing. The agencies in the Lucky Charms campaign, which carries the theme and hashtag “Lucky to be,†are McCann Always On, part of the McCann Erickson New York unit of Interpublic, and Street Factory Media in Minneapolis.
“We feel Lucky Charms is a brand of ‘magical possibilities’ for everyone and anyone,†said Greg Pearson, marketing manager for Lucky Charms at General Mills in Golden Valley, Minn., partly because each box contains three kinds of pieces shaped like rainbows, “one of the universal symbols of acceptance.â€
So far, almost all comments about “Lucky to be†have been “really positive,†Mr. Pearson said, without the kind of reaction suffered by a commercial with an interracial cast for another General Mills cereal, Cheerios. That drew so many vituperative remarks on YouTube that the commenting function was disabled.
There are many complaints, along with more than 15,500 “likes,†on the Facebook fan page for Grey Poupon mustard, sold by Kraft Foods, regarding an L.G.B.T. ad posted on Monday depicting two men from a revived version of the brand’s signature car commercial holding hands. The negative remarks include “gross,†“sick†and “you just lost another buyer.†The ad was created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, part of MDC Partners.
For Expedia’s commercial, the response has been “mixed,†Ms. Gavin said. “There are a lot of folks who applaud us and a lot of folks who aren’t happy.â€
That will not deter Expedia, she added, because she believes that time is on the company’s side. “In 10 years,†she asked, “is this even a conversation we’ll have any more?â€
Mr. Wilke echoed Ms. Gavin. Marketers “are increasingly feeling comfortable about being inclusive,†he said. “This will continue to gather steam.â€
A version of this article appeared in print on June 26, 2013, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Commercials With a Gay Emphasis Are Moving to Mainstream Media.
NEW ORLEANS â€" BP is placing full-page advertisements in three of the nation’s largest newspapers on Wednesday as the company mounts an aggressive campaign to challenge what could be billions of dollars in settlement payouts to businesses after its 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The ad, scheduled to be published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, accuses “trial lawyers and some politicians†of encouraging Gulf Coast businesses to submit thousands of claims for inflated or nonexistent losses.
“Whatever you think about BP, we can all agree that it’s wrong for anyone to take money they don’t deserve,†the ad says. “And it’s unfair to everyone in the Gulf â€" commercial fishermen, restaurant and hotel owners, and all the other hard-working people who’ve filed legitimate claims for real losses.â€
In April, Judge Carl J. Barbier of Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana upheld a court-appointed claims administrator’s interpretation of the multibillion-dollar settlement it reached with a group of lawyers for plaintiffs.
The oil company, based in London, appealed the decision. A three-judge panel from the Fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is scheduled to hear the case on July 8.
BP’s ad claims Judge Barbier’s ruling “interprets the settlement in a way no one intended†and results in settlement payouts to businesses that did not suffer any spill-related losses.
“Even though we’re appealing the misinterpretation of the agreement, we want you to know that the litigation over this issue has not in any way changed our commitment to the Gulf,†it says.
Geoff Morrell, BP spokesman, said the ad was consistent with the company’s effort to keep the public informed of its economic and environmental restoration efforts.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers claim BP simply undervalued the cost of settlement.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 26, 2013, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: BP Challenges Settlements in Gulf Oil Spill.
The Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act on Tuesday â€" which struck down one provision of the law outright, neutered another and set a precedent that could eventually threaten the rest of the legislation â€" may reduce the pressure on states to create majority-minority districts when they engage in Congressional redistricting after each decennial census.
I’ve seen a lot of speculation on Twitter about the effects this ruling might have on the partisan composition of Congress, but most of it doesn’t get the story quite right, in my view. The problem is that most people are putting too much weight on gerrymandering and not enough on geography.
There’s no doubt that the tendency of racial minorities to be concentrated in a group of overwhelmingly Democratic districts hurts the Democratic Party as it seeks control of the United States House. In the chart below,I’ve sorted the nation’s 435 Congressional districts based on the percentage of the vote they gave to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama last year.
The asymmetry is self-evident. There were 44 Congressional districts in which Mr. Obama won by at least 50 percentage points last year, compared with only eight for Mr. Romney. These hyper-partisan districts are far past the point where a Democratic candidate for Congress could lose under almost any circumstance, so they create wasted votes for Democrats. As a result, Mr. Romney won the majority of Congressional districts (! 226 out of 435) last year, despite losing the national popular vote by roughly four percentage points. And Democrats gained only eight seats in the House despite winning a (very narrow) plurality of the aggregate popular vote for the chamber.
The districts that create this asymmetry tend to be majority-minority. In the next version of the chart, I’ve highlighted the nation’s 106 majority-minority districts in orange. Mr. Obama won these districts by an average of 40 percentage points, and of the 44 districts over all that he won by 50 percentage points or more, 41 were majority-minority.
But minority populations, especially African-Americans, tend to be highly concentrated in certain geographic areas. In the North, this is generally in major cities; in the South, it may be in both urban areas and some agricultural regions (with minority populations generally low in the suburbs). You’d have to go out of your way not to create overwhelmingly minority (and Democratic) districts on the South Side of Chicago, in the Bronx or in parts of Los Angeles or South Texas, violating nonpartisan redistricting principles like compactness and contiguity.
Moreover, especially outside of the South, the white voters in cities with high minority populations tend to be quite liberal, yielding more redundancy for Democrats.
A variety of academic analyses of redistricting have found that this geographic self-sorting accounts for much â€" probably most â€" of the “skew†of Congressional districts against Democrats. Gerrymandering and other partisan efforts at redistricting do play a role, but it is mostly around the margin. A study by John Sides and Eric McGhee found that redistricting after the 2010 Census, which was controlled by Republicans in many key states, produced a net swing of only about seven House seats toward Republicans.
In this context, the legal requirements of the Voting Rights Act might also have a relatively minor effect on the number of majority-minority districts, most of which arise as a result of the geographic distribution of minority voters.
To the extent that there would be any effects from abandoning certain requirements, would they help Democrats or Republicans on balance?
The safest answer is that it will ted to help whichever party is in control of the redistricting process in a given state: the fewer legal constraints that party has, the freer it will be to draw Congressional districts as it sees fit. So if Democrats are in charge of the redistricting process in New York in 2020, perhaps they can find a way to squeeze out another Democratic seat or two by splitting up minority voters. And if Republicans are in charge in Texas, perhaps they can avoid giving up as many seats to Democrats by diluting the minority vote in cities like Dallas and Houston.
Thus, legal rulings that weaken the effect of the Voting Rights Act will tend to increase the importance of the 2020 elections, when control of the redistricting process will be at stake. But any of these effects are likely to be relatively minor compared with the role geography plays.
The Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act on Tuesday â€" which struck down one provision of the law outright, neutered another and set a precedent that could eventually threaten the rest of the legislation â€" may reduce the pressure on states to create majority-minority districts when they engage in Congressional redistricting after each decennial census.
I’ve seen a lot of speculation on Twitter about the effects this ruling might have on the partisan composition of Congress, but most of it doesn’t get the story quite right, in my view. The problem is that most people are putting too much weight on gerrymandering and not enough on geography.
There’s no doubt that the tendency of racial minorities to be concentrated in a group of overwhelmingly Democratic districts hurts the Democratic Party as it seeks control of the United States House. In the chart below,I’ve sorted the nation’s 435 Congressional districts based on the percentage of the vote they gave to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama last year.
The asymmetry is self-evident. There were 44 Congressional districts in which Mr. Obama won by at least 50 percentage points last year, compared with only eight for Mr. Romney. These hyper-partisan districts are far past the point where a Democratic candidate for Congress could lose under almost any circumstance, so they create wasted votes for Democrats. As a result, Mr. Romney won the majority of Congressional districts (! 226 out of 435) last year, despite losing the national popular vote by roughly four percentage points. And Democrats gained only eight seats in the House despite winning a (very narrow) plurality of the aggregate popular vote for the chamber.
The districts that create this asymmetry tend to be majority-minority. In the next version of the chart, I’ve highlighted the nation’s 106 majority-minority districts in orange. Mr. Obama won these districts by an average of 40 percentage points, and of the 44 districts over all that he won by 50 percentage points or more, 41 were majority-minority.
But minority populations, especially African-Americans, tend to be highly concentrated in certain geographic areas. In the North, this is generally in major cities; in the South, it may be in both urban areas and some agricultural regions (with minority populations generally low in the suburbs). You’d have to go out of your way not to create overwhelmingly minority (and Democratic) districts on the South Side of Chicago, in the Bronx or in parts of Los Angeles or South Texas, violating nonpartisan redistricting principles like compactness and contiguity.
Moreover, especially outside of the South, the white voters in cities with high minority populations tend to be quite liberal, yielding more redundancy for Democrats.
A variety of academic analyses of redistricting have found that this geographic self-sorting accounts for much â€" probably most â€" of the “skew†of Congressional districts against Democrats. Gerrymandering and other partisan efforts at redistricting do play a role, but it is mostly around the margin. A study by John Sides and Eric McGhee found that redistricting after the 2010 Census, which was controlled by Republicans in many key states, produced a net swing of only about seven House seats toward Republicans.
In this context, the legal requirements of the Voting Rights Act might also have a relatively minor effect on the number of majority-minority districts, most of which arise as a result of the geographic distribution of minority voters.
To the extent that there would be any effects from abandoning certain requirements, would they help Democrats or Republicans on balance?
The safest answer is that it will ted to help whichever party is in control of the redistricting process in a given state: the fewer legal constraints that party has, the freer it will be to draw Congressional districts as it sees fit. So if Democrats are in charge of the redistricting process in New York in 2020, perhaps they can find a way to squeeze out another Democratic seat or two by splitting up minority voters. And if Republicans are in charge in Texas, perhaps they can avoid giving up as many seats to Democrats by diluting the minority vote in cities like Dallas and Houston.
Thus, legal rulings that weaken the effect of the Voting Rights Act will tend to increase the importance of the 2020 elections, when control of the redistricting process will be at stake. But any of these effects are likely to be relatively minor compared with the role geography plays.
Francisco Roman/Disney Channel. A scene from the Disney Channel's "Teen Beach Movie."
LOS ANGELES â€" Next month Disney Channel’s young viewers will be introduced to a movie genre â€" the beach party film â€" that hasn’t been popular since their grandparents were teenagers.
“Teen Beach Movie†has a kooky plot twist and will get a marketing push on par with the one Disney gave to the hugely successful “High School Musical†series. But will Disney’s efforts result in a franchise-spawning hit? Or will “Teen Beach Movie†and its surfing, singing, super-silly characters end up, well, high and dry?
“We will find out,†said a laughing Gary Marsh, president of Disney Channels Worldwide. “We’re certainly rolling the dice to some degree.â€
The beach party film occupies a particularly dusty corner of the Hollywood curiosity cabinet. Movies like “Beach Blanket Bingo,†“Gidget†and “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini†surged from 1959 to the mid 1960s, driven by a postwar fascination with California and the growing power of young ticket buyers. But then the party abruptly ended as social change engulfed moviegoers, shifting their taste in films.
“With all of the social upheaval, these films became impossible to sell by about 1970,†explained Jeanine Basinger, the chairwoman of Wesleyan University’s film studies department. “The wholesome, innocent, endless summers became utterly unrelatable.â€
Relatability is a paramount concern in children’s entertainment. But Disney Channel is betting that kids will see “Teen Beach Movie†as a fresh take on the musical format. Mr. Marsh has already served up break-into-song movies (“High School Musical†and its sequels) and performance-based films, including “Lemonade Mouth†and, to some degree, “Camp Rock.â€
“I challenged everybody internally to find a different way to do a musical,†Mr. Marsh said. “I wanted a reinvention of the musical form.â€
He got it and then some. In “Teen Beach Movie,†two modern adolescents are transported into “Wet Side Story,†an over-the-top 1962 tale of surfers versus bikers. The characters from the film within the film â€" Tanner, Butchy, Seacat, Cheechee, Giggles, Lugnut and Struts â€" welcome the interlopers.
But the modern visitors inadvertently change the plot and in that way complicate any hope of their return to their lives in the present. (“Oh, bonkers!â€)
Multiplex efforts to reinvent the beach party genre over the years have sputtered. The independent film “Monster Beach Party†gave it a whirl in 2009, but took in a grand total of $112,791 at the box office. “Summer Catch,†which tried to recapture the beach spirit without the singing, was a bust in 2001, costing $45 million to make and selling about $26 million in tickets, after adjusting for inflation.
The last full-on beach party film a big studio tried was “Back to the Beach,†a Paramount release in 1987 that took in a modest $27 million.
Disney Channel’s immediate goal with “Teen Beach Movie†is to win big ratings and sell DVDs. If the film strikes a cultural chord like “High School Musical,†which became a $1 billion franchise (including CDs, clothing lines, theme park extensions and local stage shows), all the better.
“Teen Beach Movie,†which will premiere on July 19, is a nod to Disney’s distant past: Annette Funicello, of course, started as a Mouseketeer before teaming with Frankie Avalon in 1963 for “Beach Party,†which led to several follow-up films, including “Beach Blanket Bingo†in 1965.
That tie-in is likely to be lost on Disney’s young viewers, but they may spot another connection: Garrett Clayton, who plays the heartthrob Tanner, a “mannequin with six rows of teeth,†in the words of one character, bears a striking resemblance to Zac Efron, who formed the gooey center of “High School Musical.†Ross Lynch and Maia Mitchell star as the modern teenagers.
Mr. Marsh thinks Disney Channel viewers ages 6 to 14 will be able to relate to “Teen Beach Movie,†partly because of its similarities to “Grease,†the enduringly popular 1978 musical about high school life in the ’50s. An important scene in “Teen Beach Movie†takes place at a slumber party, just as one in “Grease†does.
CBS appears to have found a legitimate summertime hit in its adaptation of the Stephen King novel “Under the Dome,†whose first episode drew an audience of more than 13 million on Monday night.
In preliminary overnight ratings, the show’s audience reached 13.1 million, a number likely to grow, especially when delayed viewing is included.
The premiere of “Dome,†a 13-part mini-series set in a small town that is suddenly sealed off by a mysterious clear dome, also scored with the audience that counts for many advertisers â€" viewers between the ages of 18 and 49 â€" where it registered a 3.2 rating. That would count as a hit rating any time of year; in the summer, when networks have a hard time eclipsing a 1 rating in that category, the numbers for “Dome†represent a breakout performance.
On Monday night, the show faced the final game of an exciting N.H.L. championship series, which could mean a large number of hockey fans recorded the show to watch later. Also, with largely positive reviews, “Dome†has the potential to build on its ratings in future episodes.
A popular article by Verlyn Klinkenborg last week in The New York Times Sunday Review lamented the decline of English majors at top colleges and universities. Mr. Klinkenborg is worried about the “technical narrowness†of some college programs and the “rush to make education pay offâ€- which, he writes, “presupposes that only the most immediately applicable skills are worth acquiring.â€
I am sympathetic to certain parts of Mr. Klinkenborg’s hypothesis: for instance, the potential value of writing skills even for students who major in scientific or technical fields, and the risks that specialization can pose to young minds that are still in their formative stages.
But Mr. Klinkenborg also neglects an important fact: more American students are attending college than ever before. He is correct to say that the distribution of majors has become more career-focused, but thse degrees may be going to students who would not have gone to college at all in prior generations.
In 2011, according to the federal government’s Digest of Education Statistics, about 1.7 million bachelor’s degrees were awarded by American colleges, roughly double the 840,000 degrees in 1971. The number of Americans of college age has not increased nearly so rapidly. We can approximate the number of Americans who would be at the typical age to receive a bachelor’s degree by evaluating the number of 21-year-olds in the United States population. In 2011, there were about 4.6 million 21-year-olds in the United States, compared with 3.7 million in 1971 â€" only about a 25 percent increase instead of double.
A related calculation is the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded per 21-year-old in the United States. In! 1971, there were 26.7 bachelor’s degrees awarded for every 100 21-year-olds in the United States. By 2011, that figure had increased to 43.4 degrees, about a 60 percent increase.
The relative decline of majors like English is modest when accounting for the increased propensity of Americans to go to college. In fact, the number of new degrees in English is fairly similar to what it has been for most of the last 20 years as a share of the college-age population.
In 2011, 3.1 percent of new bachelor’s degrees were in English language or literature. That figure is down from 4.1 percent 10 years ago, 4.7 percent 20 years ago, and 7.6 percent 40 years ago, in 1971.
But as a proportion of the college-age population, the decline is much less distinct. In 2011, 1.1 out of every 100 21-year-olds graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English, down only incrementally from 1.2 in 2001 and 1.3 in 1991. And the percentage of English majors as a share of the population is actually higher than it wa in 1981, when only 0.7 out of every 100 21-year-olds received a degree in English.
Something of the same story holds for other traditional college majors, including many fields that are grouped under the heading of STEM, or science, technology, engineering and math. Measured as a share of all bachelor’s degrees, for example, the number of mathematics and statistics degrees has declined slightly â€" to 1.0 percent in 2011 from 1.3 percent in 1991. However, it has held steady at about 0.4 percent of the 21-year-old population.
The number of engineering graduates, likewise, has decreased slightly as a share of all college degrees. But it has increased slightly relative to the college-age population.
The social sciences abide by a similar pattern. The number of social science majors is lower by any measure since the early 1970s. But whereas the number of social-science graduates is flat since the 1980s as a proportion of degree recipients, it has increased considerably relative to the population of young Americans.
Which majors have experienced the largest increase in graduates? As I mentioned, they tend to be those associated with relatively specific post-college careers. For instance, the number of graduates in what the government calls “health professions and related programs†has roughly doubled since 1991 as a share of the college-age population. The students in this category are not necessarily bound to become doctors. (They enter college with only average SAT scores.) But the heading includes a range of majors, like hospital administration and nursing, that offer strong career prospects as the health care field adds jobs.
Undergraduate majors in business, which like the health professions tend to attract students with average SAT scores, have also become much more popular over the last four decades.
It would have been virtually unheard of 40 years ago for a student to receive a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice or a related field. But these have now become fairly common majors, as more employers in these domains prefer â€" or even require â€" college diplomas.
Some employers in the visual and performing arts, which were once thought of as crafts or trades that required hands-on experience, might also now prefer or demand college degrees, and the number of bachelor’s degrees in these fields has been on a long-term increase.
In short, college attendance has become more of a norm for a broader range of students, including those that might pursue a wide array of careers, like nursing or criminal justice, that are ordinarily associated with the middle class.
Mr. Klinkenborg’s experience is at highly selective universities, including Harvard and Yale, where he has taught nonfiction writing. In those environments, he might have some room for concern about the fate of English majors. Since 1996, the average critical reading SAT score for prospective English majors has declined to 580 from 605, among the sharpest declines in any college discipline. And the unemployment rate among English majors was 6.9 percent in 2011 - considerably higher than 5.3 percent for bachelor’s degree recipients as a whole.
But schools like Harvard and Yale are becoming ever les representative of the whole as more young Americans attend college.
Perhaps the more important moral and policy question is what academic requirements should be in place, whether in English composition or probability and statistics, among students across all majors - including those who go to college with a specific career in mind.
I hesitate to generalize too much from my own college experience, at the University of Chicago, but it is a school that emphasizes a broad and general course of study among all its undergraduates. My strategy was to choose a major - economics - that I expected to offer strong career prospects, but then to take as few courses in that field as required, diversifying my curriculum instead.
It won’t be the right approach for every student or every university. But perhaps there can be a balance between recognizing two concepts: on the one hand, that college has become more of a neces! sity for ! more careers and a wider array of Americans; on the other hand, Americans are now more likely than before to change professions throughout their working lives. Perhaps we should at once encourage or require college students to take coursework in English - and tell them to be wary about majoring in it.
A popular article by Verlyn Klinkenborg last week in The New York Times Sunday Review lamented the decline of English majors at top colleges and universities. Mr. Klinkenborg is worried about the “technical narrowness†of some college programs and the “rush to make education pay offâ€- which, he writes, “presupposes that only the most immediately applicable skills are worth acquiring.â€
I am sympathetic to certain parts of Mr. Klinkenborg’s hypothesis: for instance, the potential value of writing skills even for students who major in scientific or technical fields, and the risks that specialization can pose to young minds that are still in their formative stages.
But Mr. Klinkenborg also neglects an important fact: more American students are attending college than ever before. He is correct to say that the distribution of majors has become more career-focused, but thse degrees may be going to students who would not have gone to college at all in prior generations.
In 2011, according to the federal government’s Digest of Education Statistics, about 1.7 million bachelor’s degrees were awarded by American colleges, roughly double the 840,000 degrees in 1971. The number of Americans of college age has not increased nearly so rapidly. We can approximate the number of Americans who would be at the typical age to receive a bachelor’s degree by evaluating the number of 21-year-olds in the United States population. In 2011, there were about 4.6 million 21-year-olds in the United States, compared with 3.7 million in 1971 â€" only about a 25 percent increase instead of double.
A related calculation is the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded per 21-year-old in the United States. In! 1971, there were 26.7 bachelor’s degrees awarded for every 100 21-year-olds in the United States. By 2011, that figure had increased to 43.4 degrees, about a 60 percent increase.
The relative decline of majors like English is modest when accounting for the increased propensity of Americans to go to college. In fact, the number of new degrees in English is fairly similar to what it has been for most of the last 20 years as a share of the college-age population.
In 2011, 3.1 percent of new bachelor’s degrees were in English language or literature. That figure is down from 4.1 percent 10 years ago, 4.7 percent 20 years ago, and 7.6 percent 40 years ago, in 1971.
But as a proportion of the college-age population, the decline is much less distinct. In 2011, 1.1 out of every 100 21-year-olds graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English, down only incrementally from 1.2 in 2001 and 1.3 in 1991. And the percentage of English majors as a share of the population is actually higher than it wa in 1981, when only 0.7 out of every 100 21-year-olds received a degree in English.
Something of the same story holds for other traditional college majors, including many fields that are grouped under the heading of STEM, or science, technology, engineering and math. Measured as a share of all bachelor’s degrees, for example, the number of mathematics and statistics degrees has declined slightly â€" to 1.0 percent in 2011 from 1.3 percent in 1991. However, it has held steady at about 0.4 percent of the 21-year-old population.
The number of engineering graduates, likewise, has decreased slightly as a share of all college degrees. But it has increased slightly relative to the college-age population.
The social sciences abide by a similar pattern. The number of social science majors is lower by any measure since the early 1970s. But whereas the number of social-science graduates is flat since the 1980s as a proportion of degree recipients, it has increased considerably relative to the population of young Americans.
Which majors have experienced the largest increase in graduates? As I mentioned, they tend to be those associated with relatively specific post-college careers. For instance, the number of graduates in what the government calls “health professions and related programs†has roughly doubled since 1991 as a share of the college-age population. The students in this category are not necessarily bound to become doctors. (They enter college with only average SAT scores.) But the heading includes a range of majors, like hospital administration and nursing, that offer strong career prospects as the health care field adds jobs.
Undergraduate majors in business, which like the health professions tend to attract students with average SAT scores, have also become much more popular over the last four decades.
It would have been virtually unheard of 40 years ago for a student to receive a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice or a related field. But these have now become fairly common majors, as more employers in these domains prefer â€" or even require â€" college diplomas.
Some employers in the visual and performing arts, which were once thought of as crafts or trades that required hands-on experience, might also now prefer or demand college degrees, and the number of bachelor’s degrees in these fields has been on a long-term increase.
In short, college attendance has become more of a norm for a broader range of students, including those that might pursue a wide array of careers, like nursing or criminal justice, that are ordinarily associated with the middle class.
Mr. Klinkenborg’s experience is at highly selective universities, including Harvard and Yale, where he has taught nonfiction writing. In those environments, he might have some room for concern about the fate of English majors. Since 1996, the average critical reading SAT score for prospective English majors has declined to 580 from 605, among the sharpest declines in any college discipline. And the unemployment rate among English majors was 6.9 percent in 2011 - considerably higher than 5.3 percent for bachelor’s degree recipients as a whole.
But schools like Harvard and Yale are becoming ever les representative of the whole as more young Americans attend college.
Perhaps the more important moral and policy question is what academic requirements should be in place, whether in English composition or probability and statistics, among students across all majors - including those who go to college with a specific career in mind.
I hesitate to generalize too much from my own college experience, at the University of Chicago, but it is a school that emphasizes a broad and general course of study among all its undergraduates. My strategy was to choose a major - economics - that I expected to offer strong career prospects, but then to take as few courses in that field as required, diversifying my curriculum instead.
It won’t be the right approach for every student or every university. But perhaps there can be a balance between recognizing two concepts: on the one hand, that college has become more of a neces! sity for ! more careers and a wider array of Americans; on the other hand, Americans are now more likely than before to change professions throughout their working lives. Perhaps we should at once encourage or require college students to take coursework in English - and tell them to be wary about majoring in it.