While colleges are trying to become well-balanced and build up their reputations in certain fields, most students are looking for schools that already have the reputations that they want.
When I talked to some URMs about why they weren’t considering certain schools that were actively trying to increase their minority enrollment/change their image, one of them said to me: “I want to be somewhere where I already feel at ease, I’m not trying to be part of the transition for future kids”
I think the same holds true for kids in choosing their majors. Though MIT may be ranked highly in non-STEM fields, it doesn’t have that reputation for a lay person, and students would much rather go to a school that has already developed that reputation rather than a school that is trying to build it.
I do know a student that chose Yale CS over Georrgia Tech CS, and he talked about how Yale talked about actively growing that program’s strength and reputation and that he wanted to be apart of that. (Also, living in Georgia he though “Yale” was a name that raised more eyebrows even though everyone is infatuated with Tech).
While college and program reputations do change over time, many of us would rather go where the brand is already established, even if that means missing out out hidden gems. With that said, there are exceptions.
“the opportunities to study non-remunerative fields for your average student typically do not lead to great financial rewards, thus the student loan debt crisis.”
It’s not about the major. Lots of business majors have student loan debt, too. Art history majors are comparatively rare at schools low on the food chain. Psychology and biology are the only liberal arts majors that show up on the most popular list. Almost everyone at low-ranked schools majors in something the Ivies would consider pre-professional, like communications, education, etc. The undergrad business majors at DePaul (and public directionals, which produce a high percentage of US college grads) have only the longest shot at Bain.
I know a recent MIT grad who started in business but switched to Engr because “that is what MIT students consider ‘cool’. You are sort of looked down on if you aren’t in a STEM field”. They also decided that an Engr undergrad would still go well with an MBA grad degree, so it wasn’t totally peer pressure.
768 business
492 social sciences (345 sociology, 90 political science)
437 health professions (105 nursing, 103 public health)
273 communications
239 psychology
225 protective services (193 criminal justice)
183 engineering
156 visual and performing arts
141 education
136 social work
133 general liberal arts
121 biology
99 CS and IT (76 IT, 23 CS)
87 health and fitness and kinesiology
71 English
41 history
34 industrial technology
33 math
28 foreign languages (20 Spanish)
25 physical sciences (12 chemistry, 9 geology, 4 physics)
20 philosophy
Majors considered to be liberal arts are bold above (some people might argue whether CS is, but it is a rather small presence at the example school). Note that business is the most popular major.
That’s a LOT of sociology, and probably reflects the fact that CSULA is 90% students of color. Since it’s LA, they probably also have more interest (and job opportunities) than usual in performing arts. The rest of the major balance is pretty typical of the directional schools I’ve seen.
@JHS There are two things I really like about the Bain approach. One is that they are much more
concerned about your skill set rather than your major or school attended. The 2011 article mentioned that Bain recruits from 40 schools and 12 MBA program.
The other one is that by scaling requirements back a little, and make minor adjustments where necessary to accommodate specific employer needs, the system can serve as a generic blue print for hiring young grads; it strikes me as more fair and consistent than most.
I think those math skills serve as a proxy for analytical and critical thinking skills. One does not need advanced math to solve SAT problems, but good analytical and critical thinking skills are definitely necessary.
Sociology seems to be among the best for improving critical thinking skills, the others are multi- and interdisciplinary studies, foreign languages, physical education, math, and business. More research is still needed, but I suspect the traditional thinking that only “liberal arts” can improve critical thinking needs a re-write.
“For STEM-related majors, average earnings don’t vary much among the college categories. For example, we find no statistically significant differences in average earnings for science majors between selective schools and either midtier or less-selective schools. Likewise, there’s no significant earnings difference between engineering graduates from selective and less-selective colleges, and only a marginally significant difference between selective and midtier colleges.
That said, the earnings picture is very different for other fields. Outside of STEM, it matters tremendously where a student receives a degree.
The starkest earnings differences are for business majors, where graduates from the selective institutions earn 12% more on average than midtier graduates and 18% more than graduates from less-selective colleges. Likewise, social-science majors from selective colleges earn 11% more than their midtier counterparts and 14% more than those from less-selective schools.
For education majors, the differences are 6% and 9%, respectively. In humanities, graduates of selective schools earn 11% more than those from less-selective ones, although they don’t earn more than those from midtier schools”.
Phys Ed improves critical thinking skills? You must not know many Phys Ed majors.
Very popular major where I live. At our State U those kids have among the lowest GPA’s and SAT scores among the admitted class; the curriculum is heavy on tertiary sources/content and requires almost no synthesis of research or use of primary sources. The kids are overwhelmingly interested in careers appearing on TV in “Big Loser” type reality shows and see a BA as a ticket to celebrity.
The statistics class that most kids take is a rehash of a 7th grade “roll the dice”/what is random module. The kids do not graduate with the ability to manipulate data (or understand) a longitudinal study on health outcomes; don’t see a flaw with research design which relies on “self-journaling” to collect data vs. controlled inputs, and think a survey of 15 of their classmates on “exercise and mood disorders” is the definitive answer to a complex mental health issue.
“There are two things I really like about the Bain approach. One is that they are much more
concerned about your skill set rather than your major or school attended. (snip)
The other one is that by scaling requirements back a little, and make minor adjustments where necessary to accommodate specific employer needs, the system can serve as a generic blue print for hiring young grads; it strikes me as more fair and consistent than most.”
Canuckguy, are you in a hiring capacity within your firm? If so, nothing prevents you from instituting the Bain approach within your firm.
Why are you so concerned that other employers aren’t getting the “right” people? For all you know, the folks at Edelman and HBO and Boeing and so on are perfectly happy with how they go about hiring people. These people have human resources departments who are tasked with finding the right people. They use plenty of metrics in doing so, as blossom will attest to. If their current approaches don’t work, they try new ones. They don’t keep banging their heads against walls and wondering why they have headaches. I would expect them to be just as happy with how they go about hiring people to fit their needs, as Bain and Google are with their processes. What evidence do you have that they aren’t?
“I think those math skills serve as a proxy for analytical and critical thinking skills. One does not need advanced math to solve SAT problems, but good analytical and critical thinking skills are definitely necessary.”
Good analytical and critical thinking skills are defined differently in different fields. For our hypothetical Edelman person, it’s the ability to analyze a situation, identify the relevant talking points, anticipate reactions and draft statements accordingly, etc. - none of which require mathy analytical skills, but require a certain understanding of people. I think you seem not to understand that there is a chunk of very, very smart people for whom running Edelman (or similar) is their end goal, not working at Google, Bain or Goldman Sachs.
What makes sociology particularly attractive to students of color?
Sociology does appear to be a fairly large major at most California public universities (most of which have large percentages of students of color). But CSULA seems to have an unusually large percentage of degrees in that major (9.2%). Some others:
Bain is one of the three top management consulting firms – the other two being Boston Consulting Group, from which Bain originally spun off (or maybe it was the other way around) and McKinsey. They attract a lot of interest because as far as I know they offer the highest starting pay to new college graduates of any industry – including normal expected bonuses, well in excess of $100,000, and because they are all pretty large and hire a fair number of people. Not as many as the consulting firms formerly known as accountants, like Andersen, but less oriented to technical specialties. Mainly (for new college graduates) from colleges and universities commonly called “elite.”
I didn’t know that there was any big difference between Bain’s practices and those of the others. Each has a somewhat different culture, of course, but I think they resemble each other a lot more than they don’t.
Also a sticking point against the former president of Mount St Mary’s, who, comparing weak students to bunnies, said a glock should be put to their head and shot. Such a way of thinking is a staple at Bain but anathema in higher education.
I had never even heard of “consulting” till young people of my kids’ generation were interviewing and being hired by those firms. Some parents were very pleased, but a fair number of people I know were beating their heads against the wall and exclaiming, “that’s not why we sent you to college!”
edit: Actually I had heard of engineers or physicians consulting. That seems different. Maybe it’s not.
It’s of course totally irrelevant to students who aren’t interested in that field or similar ones. I know plenty of McKinsey-ites both personally and professionally. Really, they are just people. My friends in media would laugh uproariously at the idea that they should venerate jobs at Bain/BCG/McK.
Sometimes, the perception of desirability and eliteness of something is strongest among those on the outside, or who tried and failed to cross the admission barriers to such.
Disclosure: I had an offer from BCG that I turned down. McKinsey routinely subcontracted work to my old firm and I worked in tandem with many McKinsey folks, almost all of whom were very bright and personable. I thought highly of them.
But I think the opposite from ucb. Working in these companies is a great job for those who enjoy doing such things, and a sucky one for those who don’t. People have fields they are interested in, and fields they aren’t. A high level job at Edelman is very sexy. A high level job at McK is very sexy, but in a different way. The high level folks at Edelman aren’t envying the high level folks at McK, and of course vice versa. Only on CC do you see this narrow thinking that “everyone” desires a few specific fields and that therefore they are “elite.” Just like college prestige has a regional nature, job prestige has a field-specific nature. Which is why Bain and McK recruiting practices are great for meeting their own needs, but really are not bellwethers for how anyone else should meet recruiting needs. And they certainly aren’t bellwethers for the measurement of how good a college is.
@alh–I came on here a couple months ago to ask what “consulting” was as a category of its own (different from, like you said, medical or engineering etc.) Some very nice people explained it to me, but I still do not get it. As far as I can tell, people pay other people ( not in their field) extraordinary sums of money to tell them how to run their business. You would think they’d know better.
But what do I know? I come from a family of educators and social services types (with the occasional doc thrown in.) It’s all Greek to me.