<p>[China</a> to Cancel College Majors That Don’t Pay - China Real Time Report - WSJ](<a href=“http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/11/23/china-to-cancel-college-majors-that-dont-pay/]China”>http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/11/23/china-to-cancel-college-majors-that-dont-pay/)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Although I strongly believe the world needs more STEM graduates, this sounds absolutely ludicrous.</p>
<p>Why not reduce loans for those in majors that have lower employment and income? Student loans have gone over a trillion dollars. We can’t afford to hand loans out like candy.</p>
<p>Actually there was a discussion about this at pour thankdgiving dinner. It was suggested that students with a better chance of paying back student loan, and therefor a better risk (ie engineering majors, etc) should get a lower interest rate, just as other credit risk is calculated.</p>
<p>I didn’t read the above article, but previous articles on this subject have said the highest rate of unemployment among the Chinese youth is with those who have business degrees - huge unemployment.</p>
<p>Univerisities in the Netherlands, where I’m from, which are all public and almost free, have always contolled the number of seats available by major based on expected employment needs. This is partially driven by the fact that most courses of study only end at the Masters level. The concept of the undrgraduate degree has only been more recently introduced. It’s not that crazy of an idea; how many Musical Theater majors, for instance, can actually find paid work in this country - a couple dozen a year perhaps? </p>
<p>Sent from my Droid using CC App</p>
<p>I read through the article but didn’t see where they identified which majors they want to eliminate, and which they want to keep. It looks like they still have to study that. Did I miss something? EVerybody seems to be talking about STEM and engineering. Does it say the Chinese have good employment in STEM? Because I think it said they might be cutting out bio majors. I did a word search and didn’t see engineering or technology come up anywhere. Those may very well be the most employable, but I don’t see it in this article. </p>
<p>I’m not being a smart aleck. I read it and maybe I missed something. It wouldn’t be the first time. And I am an engineer BTW, so I certainly think it’s a decent career.</p>
<p>China isn’t the only country that does something like this. For example, in Finland all universities are state run. Not all majors are offered at all university locations, and they limit the number of admissions into each major based on what their economy can support.</p>
<p>Cross posted with keesh17. :)</p>
<p>And if anyone thinks this doesn’t go on in the US, think about how the AMA controls the number of medical schools and medical school admissions. They are not limiting majors, but they are controlling the volume of doctors coming into the employment ranks.</p>
<p>^ How does the AMA do that?</p>
<p>The American Medical Association (AMA) is both the accreditation body for medical schools in the US and the nation’s largest physician organization. This brings some obvious benefits to ensuring the quality of medical education in the US, but also raises questions about conflict of interest in their accreditation role. Although the actual number and size of medical schools is controlled by state licensing boards, those boards are generally controlled by representatives of state medical societies associated with the AMA. The AMA has an economic interest in making sure the US does not have an over-supply of doctors, as that would drive down income for physicians (and, ahem, costs for patients).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Biology is the most popular STEM major, and has relatively poor job and career prospects at the bachelor’s degree level (in the US). It is also a relatively expensive major to teach (with lab courses) compared to majors like math and most humanities and social studies.</p>
<p>One problem with trying to give access or incentives to various majors by job and career prospects is that this may end up being done with a review view mirror which may not be accurate four years from now. For example, if the hot job market in computer science in 1999, or the hot job market in civil engineering and architecture in 2005, were used as a basis of giving additional incentive for student to major in those subjects, then that would just have increased the number of unemployed graduates four years later when the respective bubbles popped. (As it is, enrollment in these majors did increase during the bubble times and did fall after the bubbles popped; graduation counts reflecting such enrollment rises and declines followed about four years later.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No it’s not - the LCME (Liaison Committee for Medical Education) is the accrediting body for US (and Canadian) medical schools. Granted, its members are appointed (half and half) by the AMA and AAMC. </p>
<p>And either way, neither the LCME nor the AMA or AAMC are limiting the volume of doctors entering the US workforce. Believe it or not, the US Government has the most control over that, since Medicare controls funding for the vast majority of residency spots, the number of which are the true bottleneck for the number of physicians entering the US. Currently, there are more residency spots than there are US medical school grads - the extra spots are filled by foreign grads. However, that gap will shrink in the coming years as new med schools are created.</p>
<p>Intparent, the AMA isn’t a governmental body, so the analogy doesn’t hold.</p>
<p>Well more than 24 of the former Musical Theatre majors I have taught and currently know… myself included… have found paying jobs this year (and in years past)… I, and many of my peers, have salaried jobs in the entertainment industry with benefits and in other non-arts fields.</p>
<p>Higher education is intended to train for careers AND life. It is more than trade school. A two year benchmark for being employed in ones undergraduate field of study is not an indication of long range employment. Also, many young people change their minds and pursue different paths. This seems to me to be a benefit of undergraduate education. All of the amazing opportunities that exist beyond what was expected upon entering or even graduating from undergrad.</p>
<p>I do have a graduate degree (also in an entertainment field), but many of my “well employed” friends do not. All of us did work our way up in our chosen professions, whether on stage or behind the scenes. However, this is the case with my friends in business, law, engineering, medicine, etc… Some of my friends in those fields actually graduated with undergraduate arts degrees… This has not hindered their professional opportunities in non-arts professions or
advanced education as long as they also had the knowledge base and pre-
requisites. I have friends who completed BFA degrees in the arts as well as pre-
med requirements who have since gone to medical school and are now doctors. </p>
<p>;-)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think they care much about quality if they run a system which requires several thousand foreign medical graduates a year to enter the US to fill the available residency places. If they wanted direct oversight of quality, they would want more doctors trained in the US.</p>
<p>keesh17: “Universities in the Netherlands, where I’m from, which are all public and almost free, have always controlled the number of seats available by major based on expected employment needs.”</p>
<p>This may be what you perceive, but my perception is a totally different one. You are comparing the first 3 years at Dutch universities with college education in the US. That’s entirely wrong. Given the subject of this thread you should at least include all the “HBO institutes” before concluding anything (and probably quite a few “MBO institutes” as well). There is a reason why graduates from these HBO institutes do get a bachelor degree when graduating. And don’t tell me that the Dutch government is in control of what is going on there.</p>
<p>Newspapers have been filled the past few years with stories about HBO programs that are extremely weak, about fraud, about students not being able to get jobs after graduating. Many, very serious debates in parliament have been hold about this topic. </p>
<p>I agree with KatMT that “Higher education is intended to train for careers AND life.” However, the problem with the HBO institutes that I’m talking about is that they are so bad that they do not train for anything at all. This is not about doing a major in an area that doesn’t offer job opportunities. This is about schools offering non-majors. Students are not attending these schools because of their passion, but mostly because it is an easy and cheap way to enjoy student life. </p>
<p>Don’t misunderstand me. Very good to even top HBO institutes do exist as well. They really give passionate students the opportunity to develop. However, to conclude that the Dutch government “has always controlled the number of seats available by major based on expected employment needs" is nonsense.</p>
<p>From what I understand, in China students must remain in the department where they matriculate in their freshman year. Also, the value of a completed degree has lots to do with the reputation of the school and department and even a STEM degree from a “lesser” school can prove to be of little value if the market fluctuates.</p>
<p>In this country, students have some freedom to transfer between departments and schools, and complete more than one major or a major and minor. Many more students enter as STEM majors than graduate, especially among those who would seem best equipped to complete a STEM education who enter our elite universities. </p>
<p>We are also more open to the possibility of graduates returning to school to complete a second B.S. or a certificate if the first degree is not viable in the job market. I know many middle-aged adults who did this in their late twenties or early thirties, but I do not think this will remain a viable option for so many of our new grads as tuition rises and post-graduate options remain unpredictable in so many fields inside and outside of STEM.</p>
<p>In the US, there has been a huge increase in theater majors. Colleges would be much better served convincing those students to minor in theater and major in something else.</p>
<p>
That’s interesting but doesn’t answer my question. I think you’ve posted this many times on CC, and I have no reason to doubt it.</p>
<p>The article is about China eliminating less employable majors. I read the commentary here and everybody seems to assume that means non-STEM majors. The only STEM major mentioned in the article, as far as I can see, is biology which is mentioned as something they will likely cut out.</p>
<p>So my question is, why are people assuming most non-STEM majors are necessarily going to go, and most sTEM majors will stay? What data about the Chineses job market is this based on? I don’t see this conclusion in the article, so I asked somebody to point me to it. It may very well be true, but I’m wondering where the data is for this conclusion, or is it just conjecture based on what people know about the US job market.</p>
<p>^^^^^Right, this could mean closing down universities and departments in any major, if they graduate students who are not employable. From what I have read, large numbers of Chinese engineering grads from lower-tiered universities have not been able to find jobs. I suspect this will mostly affect STEM majors, since the overwhelming majority of Chinese students who matriculate into universities there seem to be majoring in a STEM field.</p>
<p>I have to wonder however how this will affect majors in fields both inside and outside of STEM who might not face good employment prospects in China but might be very employable outside of China, especially after additional study abroad? (Outside of STEM, Chinese language and literature comes to mind…)</p>
<p>^^^
Very true fraz. Whether or not something is valuable, there can be a glut in almost any profession, and there can also be excessive education devoted to training people for jobs that don’t require that type of education. For example, in engineering, there are schools like MIT or Caltech, there are a whole slew of state schools maybe a tier below, and then there are schools like DeVry , ITT, and community college, where people learn more practical skills. There is a need for all these types of training, and certainly there is some overlap. But in general, you don’t need someone with a PhD from MIT to bench test your OEM products or work at the help desk. But you likely need far more of those types of workers than you do a PhD academic or start-up nerd from MIT. So it isn’t a matter of engineering vs. not engineering but a balance of types of technical education.</p>
<p>Same with the medical profession. You don’t need that many expensively trained MDs an ODs if you have well trained NPs, PAs, RNs, and other technicians. As much as I enjoy time with my doc, I’d start to get a little worried about the effect on the bottom line if my cardiologist came in and ran the echocardiogram machine, or hooked up the probes on me for my stress test. As it is, even doing 75% of my physical exam could be done by an experienced and well trained nurse or PA IMO. And that’s how they do mine. THe PA does the first half gathering a bunch of data, the doc comes in and verifies or rechecks things as he or she sees fit. THat way I get maybe a 30 to 45 minute exam rather than 10 minutes from an overworked MD. Docs are too busy these days, I’d rather have them spend more time on the serious, complicated things and less on the routine. The question is where to draw the line.</p>