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<p>Why would all students need to write computer programs??</p>
<p>It seems to me that all majors are being developed to be increasingly relevant, rigorous, and meaningful to the student and to the community/client/employer. I see evidence of continuous effort to improve higher education at all levels. </p>
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<p>Agree. I have noticed this bias here on CC for a long time now. My understanding is that weak students in the US tend to choose business or education as a major. This is certainly not the case up here in the Great White North. I am not aware of any school in Ontario that has a lower admission requirement for business than arts and science. On the contrary, in our better universities business is among the most competitive programs on campus.</p>
<p>When I was in high school, “commerce” was associated with secretarial work- typing, shorthand etc. This all changed with the introduction of mathematical finance in the 1970s, when the “quant jocks” came to the fore, no? Is this thinking simply a hold-over from the old days?</p>
<p>No. It’s in large part a function of the fact that if you look at the top 15 or so private research universities, only two offer an undergraduate business program, Penn and MIT, and business is really a stepchild at the undergraduate level at MIT. A few others offer certificate programs and the like. And of course the same is true with the top liberal arts colleges. So if you are a really smart, academically ambitious kid from a well-to-do family that is acculturated to the U.S. Establishment, chances are that you are going to college at an institution that regards business programs as second-rate education. And if you are an employer and you want to hire the creme-de-la-creme, you know that a lot of it isn’t going to be found in undergraduate business programs.</p>
<p>^ even better a ton of the students at the top schools (whose expected life time earnings are excellent) major in useless fields like sociology … since these school have liberal arts educations at their core.</p>
<p>“useless fields like sociology”</p>
<p>Pretty much the entire field of management studies as taught in business schools grew out of sociology. People like Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Warren Bennis were academic sociologists who turned toward business in mid-career. Peter Drucker was trained as a lawyer and journalist, but essentially practiced sociology.</p>
<p>It was field research methods developed by those useless sociologists (and psychologists) that was so brilliantly harnessed by the Obama campaign in his 2008 election. They changed the game, politically. The anti-intellectual factions in the Republican party still haven’t grasped that concept. Maybe they should have pursued liberal arts education 
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<p>I think the list of obviously “useful” majors is much broader, yet I agree with the initial poster on the general idea that there are many college/major choices which would leave their grad professionally unemployable. I also think that given how expensive higher education is today, it is hard to justify choosing some of these majors simply because you “love” this. Here is some interesting statistics: 37% of working college graduates are in jobs that don’t require more than a high school degree. Additional 11% are in jobs that don’t require a four-year college degree (The Center for College Affordability & Productivity). I’ve spoken with college deans who told me that they do not know an even approximate employment statistics for their grads. Yet, many unemployable majors are continued to be offered and many of these families are putting up a lot of money and most of them want the grad will be employed. On the other hand, there is a value in almost any bachelor degree. </p>
<p>Having pondered this issue for a while, as a grad, a parent, and a responsible citizen my response has been to work on connecting those interested in particular college majors and careers to those who’ve gotten these degrees and worked on these jobs. If you are a parent who’s has a degree and an interesting career path, please pay it forward by telling your career story at careerkompas.com . I am hoping someone will do it for your kids as well.</p>
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<p>In which case it is not in fact a matter of “bias” but a well-founded observation. As JHS points out at length.</p>
<p>I’m someone with a useless degree in sociology. But I did learn enough about data analysis to be able to say with some confidence that the OP is incorrect in his generalizations and recommendations for future scholars based on “labor market research”. </p>
<p>OP is painting with a broad brush and seems to have a heavily truncated list of economically worthwhile majors, in my opinion. However, I don’t think he is off track at all in general. It doesn’t really tell us much that a humanities major from Harvard can make it to the 1%. This is not about Ivy League grads expanding their minds in the humanities and then going on with their lives in consulting, wall street, law or what have you. I have a friend who went from Harvard English dept. to Goldman. His degree wasn’t “worth it” because it was in English, it was “worth it” because it came from Harvard. This is just another useless anecdote. The vast majority of college grads do not graduate with such a tailwind.</p>
<p>We are many years past the time when a college degree could be had for a good part-time job, summer work, and maybe a small loan. A time when lost income over 4 years was the biggest challenge to attending college. Kids went to expand their minds, so to speak, at no earth shattering cost. Do we really still live in this world? Some may (and good for them, I say), but most do not. If I had $10 million in the bank, my kids could spend $250,000 studying basket weaving for all I care. Okay, I might advise them against it, but I don’t think I would cut them off either. Same thing goes if they were able to get a full scholarship, or otherwise pay their own way. But if that money had to be scraped from my income, home equity, and retirement saving, no way, it’s not “worth it”. </p>
<p>The bottom line is, what you pay, and what it costs you (two different things), matters. Which means, what something is “worth” is different for each of our personal situations. I don’t think it’s a far cry to state however, that many majors, for the average (non-famous school, loans needed and/or home equity pillaged, etc) student, are not really “worth it”. </p>
<p>Does this mean I hate basket weaving or basket weavers? Does this mean I devalue their worth in society? Does this mean I deny basket weavers have had a positive and sometime very important impact on all of our live? Did the OP state such? NO! I’m just saying that spending $250,000 to learn basket weaving, for someone who doesn’t have money to burn, is probably not “worth it”. Like MiamiDAP’s Rosetta Stone, there is probably a more logical way to achieve the same goal. </p>
<p>Finally, despite the mountains of anecdotes to the contrary provided, there is an epidemic of student-loan debt and failure to thrive in our economy. Adult children moving back into their parents home is expanding at an alarming rate as the number of grads who cannot support themselves after graduation keeps rising. The unemployment rate for this age group is at deep recessionary levels and the under-employment rate is at levels almost never seen before. Do we solve these problems by pushing everyone into engineering? Obviously not. But is the problem made worse every time colleges introduce a new ‘XYZ Studies’ major to accommodate the latest wave I-must-go-to-college high school grads at $250,000 a pop? Yes, definitely. There is no easy solution, but having this discussion can be useful even if it does involve a little more effort and maturity than typing… <em>yawn</em> or <em>■■■■■</em>.</p>
<p>"Finally, despite the mountains of anecdotes to the contrary provided, there is an epidemic of student-loan debt and failure to thrive in our economy. "
-Because it is NOT “our” economy by any measure whatsoever. It is economy based on “foreign” to the USA economic phylosophy and since I have a greatly long and deep esperience with this type. I can tell you, that it is NOT going get better unless we leave this futile attempts behind, adn it does not look like it is happenning, the opposite. So, I am looking forward to much much worse than current conditions. </p>
<p>@MiamiDAP
Not sure exactly what you’re getting at, but obviously the macroeconomic situation is the result of an infinite number of dynamic factors. Certainly only a portion of the problem can be laid at the feet of student loans and college major selection-mismatch. The economy continues to change though, and the everyone-must-go-to-college-no-matter-what mentality that pervades in this country is not in sync with many of those changes. Enabling this mentality with an ever growing list of, well, unemployable majors to absorb these students, in many cases (if they can’t tap a trust fund), makes the problem worse. </p>
<p>Not too many will be in trouble with a BA in Romance Languages from Harvard, but for many students, the same degree from Dowling College (and, frankly, hundreds of colleges following the same path) means saying hello to a decade of debt servitude and their parent’s basement. I don’t think there is any crime in pointing this potential downside out to kids ahead of time.</p>
<p>ETA: Of course, studying engineering guarantees nothing. But if you complete the degree, the incidence and duration of debt and residency in said basement will be lower on average.</p>
<p>Swarthmore’s website mentions that approximately 90% of Swarthmore grads attend graduate or professional school. Most other selective LACs also report a very large portion of the class continuing to pursue additional education beyond their bachelor’s degree. An undergraduate major is not synonymous with the end point of education or one’s final career goals. Would a doctor who pursued a major in women’s studies be any worse than one who pursued a major in biology? Or might the women’s studies perspective have a positive impact on interpersonal relations that would not occur in medical school, more so than the chance of covering something important in upper level biology courses that was not repeated in medical school. A similar case could be made for nearly any humanities major combined with a professional degree. Some of those pursuing grad degrees choose to get PhDs, with hopes of researching and/or teaching in the field they are passionate about, rather than trying to apply their … studies degree in the private sector. Is teaching and/or expanding knowledge in these fields also useless? Even without further degrees, some liberal arts majors do quite well financially. For example, Payscale reported only a 6% difference in mid-career salary between those with a bachelor’s in supply chain management (mentioned as one of the few non-useless fields in the 1st post) and philosophy. Obviously most of the philosophy majors were not working in philosophy, but many were able to use the degree to transition to lucrative fields, and the critical thinking skills used in philosophy likely were useful in those fields. If you can use the degree to transition to a lucrative field without a great difference in mid-career salary from a professional focused major, and the degree helps improves your critical thinking or perspective, is it useless?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t use the terms worthless or useless (nor do i think they are precisely interchangeable), I disagree with the OP there, overstepped his argument and used too broad a brush as I stated. There is always something left at the end. I would use the term ‘not worth it’ with the implicit cost component. </p>
<p>Swarthmore may as well be Harvard. Perhaps not as famous with the general public, but still an exception amongst thousands of colleges out there. The vast majority of college students do not go to a school with the cache in grad school circles of Swarth. And exactly how many WS PhDs do we need to train the next generation of undergrads who will not be attending Swarth, and be much more likely to be in the debt/basement situation? An argument can be made that the more PhDs we make in these majors, the more bottom tier schools start to employ them and offer the major. Schools from which both grad school and gainful employment for grads in these departments are little more than pipe dreams.</p>
<p>If you can use the degree in the manners you describe, they serve their purpose, obviously. Would you expect the OP or anyone to disagree? Not sure how many undergrads go on to med school or PhDs though. Seems we are talking about low volume exceptions here. And no one needs to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to improve their critical thinking or widen their perspectives (MiamiDAPs Rosetta Stone comments). But overall of course I agree; you are correct. If you are in an elite school, most if this criticism is beside the point.</p>
<p>Also, just to clarify one comment…</p>
<p>It isn’t just the number of students going on to med school, but the number coming from purely humanities majors. A pre-med major is hardly worthless to someone going to med school. I don’t think you will find the OP or anyone else arguing with such a tautology.</p>
<p>This is the thread that never ends…</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>I’ll repeat what I always say on these threads: as long as a student can identify a at least a few reasonable career goals -one of them a fairly stable one - that would be achievable for someone of a given major, the major is not “useless.” </p>
<p>There’s a big difference between “I don’t know what I want to do, but I guess history is kind of cool” and “I’m interested in women’s studies. Right now, I’m thinking of going into non-profit work, but I could also see myself going to law school or becoming a social worker.” Even for someone aiming for a really difficult career path like theater, it should be possibly to identify some careers beyond “successful Broadway star.”</p>
<p>Of course, the plan “B” might not be as lucrative as going to Wall Street, but that’s the point that you need to take a long hard look at just why it matters so much to you, assuming your kid is OK with it, whether that life is comfortable middle-class or fabulously wealthy. </p>
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<p>JHS gave the best explanation I have ever come across. It may, however, be a well-founded observation in the US but it is certainly not the case where I am for various historical and cultural reasons. On the other hand, the universal observation that certain liberal art majors tend to attract stronger students than others is considered a “taboo topic”. Why the double-standard? </p>
<p>My favorite line of the OP is when he laments “Can’t they just read the book by themselves and get as much out of it?”</p>
<p>That is the crux of the issue here. When you read the book by yourself, you only get one side of it–and a limited side at that. Education is about discussion and seeing things from various perspectives. No wonder the OP thinks there is only one path to success and that education is only a means to get a high paying job.</p>
<p>The OP doesn’t grasp that an undergraduate education can open your eyes to the world. It’s about seeing things from different perspectives and understanding that things aren’t black and white. It’s about learning to analyze and problem solve and work with people who may have different points of view. It allows for the formation of leadership skills and for the growth of ingenuity and the creative thought necessary for innovation. Ultimately, people with these skills are the people who will be successful in their fields. Without those skills, most people will only carry out other’s orders and will plateau.</p>