All financial jobs are not in IB. All students don’t aim to work in IB. Most students are not trying to get into elite business schools. I don’t see the relevance of HBS to this conversation.
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I honestly don’t understand this point of view. If a major is essentially job training, then our system is set up wrong. Why not do your major instead of high school, and then go straight to work at 18?
My sister majored in fine arts (sculpture). She has worked in copywriting, advertising, and editing. Now, she manages UX design teams. Her company has terrific retirement and benefits. She does very well financially, and still pursues her art inside and outside of work.
My husband majored in philosophy, and loved it. Went on to get an MD and PhD. Still reads philosophy, travels to birthplaces of great philosophers, always interested in religions and cultures of his patients.
Why the fear of majoring in what interests you? My D19 is a psych major who was required to take statistics and multiple classes in research methods. She is constantly using her skills to evaluate the significance (or lack thereof) of research studies. She doesn’t need calculus to know whether a study is randomized, double-blind, properly powered, controlled for variables, etc. If she needs an evaluation beyond this in some future role, she’ll involve the statisticians.
The belief in a hierarchy of majors on this thread, and the disparagement of intellectual curiosity has me baffled. I tell my kids to spend two years taking a wide range of classes. Find out the best professors and take their class no matter what it is, go outside your comfort zone. Then, think about what you are most curious about. What you love most will bring out your best work, and the most insight into what you should do next.
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I am just saying that I am scared. I am not saying the kid did something different from what he loved. He preferred something over history.
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It’s not just Ziprecruiter. For example, the federal reserve sends a questionnaire to thousands of randomly selected households throughout the United States to get a rough feeling for changes in financial well being. The questions are weighted to provide a representative sample of the full US. One of the numerous of questions in the long survey asks persons who attended at least “some college”, if they’d choose a different field of study. Results are summarized below for the most recent available survey.
They don’t investigate the reasons why, but I expect one factor is satisfaction with current job and expected future career, including earnings. Many humanities have excellent earnings and career prospects, but typical (median) earnings tend to be lower than the fields that do better in these surveys – both earlier in career and later on in career.
Of course earnings isn’t everything. One also needs to consider things like how much they’d enjoy/dislike different career paths. A job can be so enjoyable and rewarding that you’d almost do it for free, or a job can be spending the majority of waking hours in a miserable experience that leads to long term mental and physical negative consequences.
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Where did the class of 22 go? Well, the top 25 employers by volume were 4 accounting firms, 6 big tech companies, 6 large banks, 3 defense contractors, 2 retail and 2 military branches ( 1 of each misc). Students can go to their websites and see who they hire for themselves.
I am so confused. The OP wrote about there being fewer and fewer people interested in the humanities and that being reflected in many ways.
And then there are lots of posters who continue to posit that actually lots of students are getting worthless humanities degrees for lots of reasons (tho this mostly is the ‘vibes’ I was talking about earlier).
But the charts/articles above show that students are leaving the humanities fields in droves. That there are fewer humanity degrees being given ever since 2008.
So, is it the market is working, no worries that humanities is becoming smaller and smaller portion of overall graduates?
Is it the market isn’t working and we should figure out ways to increase interest in the humanities?
Are there really more English, History, Philosophy and Language graduates struggling to find work as opposed to students getting sports management degrees, hospitality degrees, communications degrees, business management degrees, etc?
Is this an actual issue with the humanities or is this an issue of the rigor required (of any degree) at certain institutions that may be graduating large numbers of students?
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What do you mean by Class of 22? And what does Top 25 employers means? How many people are captured in that “Top 25” employer number (in relationship to the number of total employed people)?
I don’t think there is an issue with humanity degrees in general. I think that many students are unprepared to make the most of an undergrad humanities education.
It’s a case of : don’t disparage the game, disparage the player
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Per your request
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But there are a lot of students graduating each year and only 10% (or so) of them are going to these 25 companies. Highly competitive to get into these companies after undergrad. So, 90% of students graduating do not work for these companies. Students need to look beyond these huge corporations for opportunities.
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Perhaps not, @beebee3, but I do not see the sports management or hospitality faculties demanding more kids majoring in the subject. So what if we have 50k fewer humanities grads than in 2008, or 50k more than in 1990? Is there some magic number we are trying to reach and if so why? We can all experience the direct effects of a shortage of nurses and teachers. Who said there is a shortage of religion majors? Maybe we have the right number now
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I have an elite MBA (program was rated number three when I was there; it’s typically in the top five) so thank you for helpful comments.
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How many people would be paying for college if they didn’t think it was required to get a decent job?
Yes, people go to college to get a piece of paper that indicates they’re ready for the work force. Not because they want to become worldly, well-rounded individuals.
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That is a fantastic question, you should start a new thread about that!
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A guy in my neighborhood owns a landscaping company. He didn’t go to college, and I think other than his arborist (who has both a four year degree and a masters) none of the people he hires has a college degree. I’ll bet he is out-earning the recreation management and hospitality BA holders by a significant margin.
Not every “piece of paper” indicates the same “ready for the work force” as others.
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Yeah, that right there had me scratching my head as well.
In fact, one could argue that the opposite is true. Anyone can learn history at any age. The window for leaning math closes before one enters college.
I mean, really learning.
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Not every talented mathematician was doing advanced math before college.
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Yeah, I do wonder who Walmart hires! [History majors joke withheld:]
In all seriousness, the largest employers are just that: largest. Not sure what this list is supposed to tell us.
DS had an internship offer from #1 on that list after sophomore year that he turned down in favor of a much better option.
Exceptions prove the rule in this case. In Math, if you are not early, you are late.
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Yes, there is always the proverbial exception that proves the rule.
But just as is the case with serious music, while there are always late bloomers, most accomplished classical musicians didn’t wait until they get into Julliard to pick up the violin.
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