New data from @ipeds_nces out today. The share of students majoring in English has dropped by half in 20 years: in history, down 44% just since 2007. 
It's not the worst possible data, though: 2017 declines were slower than 2014-2016, and there's some reason to hope that things may have bottomed out at elite colleges:
Degree numbers usually fluctuate with the economy, but English majors have fallen for 24 consecutive years, French for 19. Every other streak in the top 10 is either humanities or education; most still ongoing.
What about minors? Language and literature minors, the largest type, are only down a fifth; English and History both down 35% to 40% as a percent of all minors.
2017 marks the year that history finally fell behind its old rival, kinesiology and exercise science, in the number of majors.
Here's one view of the broader universe of changes. STEM fields are all rising: social sciences and business are down since 2008. The great recession was a major turning point, but so was 2013/2014.
Worth emphasizing that it's not *just* the humanities caught in the undertow. Political science and sociology are also down 20-30% since 2008, while economics and psychology are steady.
Sometimes raw number matters more than share of degrees: here's 20-year trajectories of *all* the humanities fields tracked by humanitiesindicators.org. Most fields have lost bodies--not just market share--since 2011, even those like philosophy and classics that had been booming.
Counterpoint to that optimism: data from the Harvard admissions lawsuit suggests the 2018-2019 IPEDS numbers will likely be lower at elite schools than 2017, insofar as the ~30,000 Harvard applicants are representative. h/t @James_S_Murphy via @rbthisted
