What America Studies
A single flowing picture of four decades of American higher education: each band is a group of majors, and its width is that group's share of all bachelor's degrees conferred that year. Business stays the broadest band throughout; health care widens relentlessly; education narrows from its teacher-boom width to a sliver; and the engineering-plus-computing band swells with each tech cycle. The residual band collects every field outside the seven named groups.
What does it show?
Four decades of college majors as one stream: business holds nearly a fifth of all bachelor's degrees, health care doubles its share, education shrinks from teacher-boom scale to a sliver, and engineering plus computer science grow by a third.
Methodology
Bachelor's degrees conferred by U.S. degree-granting institutions, grouped from NCES Digest of Education Statistics field tables — the 2019 edition's annual per-field series extended through the latest year with the 2023 edition's table 322.10 (editions are checked for agreement in overlapping years) — and divided by total bachelor's degrees from table 318.10. Groups are drawn as a centered stream; fields outside the seven named groups form the residual band.