If you look at the Hamilton project, history majors tend to do a little better than all college majors over the course of their careers in terms of earnings. This deep dive into the ACS data sheds some light into why. History majors are more likely than other college graduates to have graduate or professional degrees. ** The average earnings of history majors is likely brought up higher by the large number of them who become highly paid lawyers. **
@Nhatrang Your story is reminiscent of my division where we had a whole stable (think 100 people on location and others abroad) of IT, CS, engineer, cyber security people supporting our core group. They were making really decent salaries but not the âbig bucksâ as support people. Only a few ever made it out of that back office job into the the core group despite many wanting to do so. It was rare to find folks who had the requisite package of skills to do the jobs in the âcash cowâ part of the operation.
Thatâs all fine as long as students realize that they are most likely going to have to pick up additional credentials beyond a bachelorâs degree. For those who are unwilling or unable to continue to acquire additional accreditation beyond a basic B.A. (or B.Sc. for that matter) it is going more difficult for them to find well compensated employment, which no doubt accounts for the number who âregret their degreesâ as stipulated in the article. I think it is fair to consider many non-professional college degrees to be the new high school diploma i.e. basic education but not job specific skills training. The days of employers willing to take a university degree as a proxy for âable to learnâ and hire students and train them in-house are mostly gone (though I note the exceptions as pointed out by doschicos and Nhatrang). Students opting for a general arts or sciences degree need to be open to the possibility that they will need some form of additional skills training once they graduate (whether that be a masters degree or post-graduate certificate or diploma) and they will need to acquire it at their own expense before employers are willing to hire them. The problem is that there are many who donât realize that and then when they graduate are shocked that their employment options are more limited than they expected.
The âSJWâ throwaway parenthetical isâŠodd.
I know a number of people who would happily identify as SJWs, and work with pretty heavy loads of data every day of their lives. Heck, some of them are even engineers and economists!
It may be rare to find people with the âwhole packageâ, as you claim, but quantitative skills are more rare than softer skills and thus both more highly compensated and more frequently sought for entry level jobs now. Back office jobs, like HR, still exist in every industry and perform a valuable function separate from the profit center. HR is usually staffed with psychology majors.
Itâs very true, same phenomenon is my company and probably most. It is always frown upon in our company when someone is so technical but just canât take that next step, they would just be a worker bee for the rest of their career. Decent salaries with 3% per year with the merit increase. And itâs never fun to have that type of employee working for you. If you want to go places, you have to have the soft skills.
Thereâs been some discussion of soft skills, but some soft skills are closer to personality traits. If youâre introverted or shy, college isnât going to turn you into an extrovert. Some public speaking classes can help, but no liberal arts degree is going to make public speaking ever seem natural. If youâre introverted/shy or a jerk, a history degree isnât going to make you more prepared to navigate office politics.
Could already be happening, as the greatly increasing number of good entry and lower-mid-level people in the field may be making it more difficult for good (but not superstar) higher-mid-level people to find more technical individual contributor roles.
In post 182, @dfbdfb posted a study by Nathan Kuncel. I find anything by Kuncel is worthy of attention. The Marvin D. Dunnette Distinguished Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology really knows his stuff and does not lie about the data.
My favorite piece on standardized testing is a TED talk by this man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv_Cr1a6rj4
Cut to the chase, 11:25 is where he starts talking about social class and what happens when SES is taken out of the equation. That is what factor analysis is for, no?
Another idea that is being bandied around is the notion that it only predicts first year grades. He talked about it much earlier, 2:00.
In my neck of the woods even those roles require specialized credentials. You need a diploma in HR to get hired and that often tends to be a post-graduate certification. The reality is that with so many more students attending university (despite the shrinking numbers in the typical age cohort) employers can afford to be picky and what they seem to want are professional certifications.
There are whole professions vanishing and new ones appearing. Most professions reshape as far as needed/expected skills and the rate of change will be only accelerating in the future. Ultimately, people who are unable to be flexible will be unhappy with their major, no matter what that major is. A lot of jobs will become more fluid and people will need to âcreateâ their job or find their niche. There will be way more interdisciplinary skills needed in the future. Majors, as we know them now, may become less relevant.
It always puzzled me that you need a college degree to be a nurse or elementary school teacher. There are countries where you get these skills in specialized high schools ( at least for entry level positions). In general, high schools are failing kids as far as teaching them how to reason, study and express themselves. Very often I interview seniors who are unable to put two logical sentences together but somehow are accepted and excited to go to college. With few exceptions, those kids will be disappointed, no matter what their major is ( unless, again, they find a niche to fit some unusual skill one may have ).
Probably if high schools would do a better prep work, less college graduates would be unhappy with their major.
A. Need I, once again, remind people that âLiberal Artsâ includes Math and all the Sciences, except, perhaps, Computer Science?
B. The largest major in most of the âtopâ Liberal Arts Colleges is business/economics.
C. According to government research, the degree with the lowest unemployment rate (1.4%) is an Ag degree. Unemployment rates for people with an English BA is 3.4%, while that of people with an ME degree is 3.8%.
The highest unemployment is for people with degrees in geography, which is 6.9%.
Education degrees all have low unemployment, overall
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_505.10.asp
PS. these arenât for new graduates but for 25-29 year olds.
âTake KPMG, McKinsey has their hourly rate of 200-500 per hours. Do you really think we paid them that much for their ability to program? Itâs definitely NOT for their technical skillset,â
Thatâs not how people with technical skillsets are compensated, especially in silicon valley. A lead software developer at a place like Google may be only be paid $100 a hour but they get a lot of stock, like another $2-300K. If you include stock, a google technical director brings home more than a Mcksinsey junior partner, maybe even senior.
"The validation/testing work is relative easy, they need a little training, and certainly does NOT need a STEM degree! I have an epiphany â why not hiring those stay at home moms? "
Your posts generalize so much that they border on stereotyping, like above, this is so easy, even women can do it!
This is a gross generalization. Why do people assume humanities majors are simply trying to avoid stats or math? This is âcommonly doneâ? How belittling.
News flash: There are actually humanities majors that like their field. They are not just trying to avoid other subjects.
Some of the majors in the liberal arts donât have much in common. It might be more useful to divide majors into those that are quantitative and math intensive and those that arenât quantitative and may not require any math beyond the universityâs general ed requirements.
Indeed, each area of study requires a different set of mental skills and people are attracted according to their intellectual and emotional affinity with the field. Sometimes they pick their major based on reasoning and calculations and with some luck it may still be a good match in the end.
A brilliant mathematician may be a lousy CEO while a philosophy major may be a great leader. But even in the same field, a brilliant mathematician may be a lousy professor, since it requires different skills.
What @ProfSD said, plus the fact that some humanities majors do actually involve a pretty decent amount of stats, at least in most subfieldsâlinguistics, human geography, and poli sci are obvious ones, but also some approaches to composition/rhetoric (which falls within the dreaded English degree, even!), folklore, history, and (for those who consider it part of the humanities rather than a social science) anthropology.
Basically, could people please stop overgeneralizing about whatâs involved in the liberal arts or humanities or economics or the sciences or any other field where you clearly donât have any idea.
Sincerely,
A quantitativist who works in a humanities field
How many English, folklore, or history programs require calculus to get an undergraduate degree? How many history courses require differential equations as a pre-requisite?
@roethlisburger, thatâs goalpost-moving. Upthread thereâs been claims that humanities fields are refuges from math and stats, and I was pointing out that it isnât quite that bumper-sticker-slogan simple.
Iâll agree that there are few if any humanities programs that require calculus (though more and more graduate programs in some of the humanities fields I listed require an equivalent level of statistical knowledge, at least)âbut thereâs quite a bit of middle ground between just the bare minimum level of math to pass gen-ed requirements and differential equations.
These are completely different industries with completely different practices. While KPMG, McKinsey or similar may hire some CS/engineer type employees, the overwhelming majority CS/engineer/tech graduates at highly selective colleges target other industries and choose to work in different industries that have different practices. This is even true among Ivy League grads who are known for have an especially large rate of students in finance and consulting.
For example, Brown has a good variety of post-graduate stats by major at https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/careerlab/undergraduate-post-graduation-employment-by-industry-employer-sector . The companies that the most CS majors joined in the multi-year sample were as follows. Only 4% of CS grads worked for finance sector companies, and only 1% worked in consulting.
Companies Hiring Most Recent Brown CS Majors
- Google â 52
- Microsoft â 28
- Facebook â 11
- AppNexus â 6
- Adobe â 5
Technical skillset is critical for this type of software engineer CS hire and is one of the key reasons for the high compensation, which can easily rival or exceed the numbers quoted in this thread for other industries. Larger tech companies often have separate non-software engineer groups that handle sales, customer support, and other functions that have a large amount of direct customer interaction. Nevertheless, a technical skill set alone is rarely enough. Tech employees also need to be able to work well and communicate well with other members of the team/group. Interviews usually directly test technical skillset, but also less directly evaluate soft skills, including estimating ability to work well within a team/group setting. Tech employees are also often rated on communication/team skills in performance reviews, which impacts rate of salary increases. This is one area that employers frequently note room for improvement among new grads, and not just among CS majors.
There are many types of validation/testing. Some are more complex than others. For example, a validation/testing engineerâs position might involve working with other engineers to understand the tech and theoretical details of how the product works, understand product requirements and risks, then create/update a long a set of automated tests that controls the lab equipment using a variety of programming languages. This series of tests would be critical in determining when the product is good to release/ship to customers, and could be very costly for the company if not done well. When the test fails, he/she might need to understand why the test fails and fix/understand/file tech report on the problem. This type of position is likely to require a CS/engineering degree and be well compensated.
However, a validation/test employeeâs position could also involve primarily clicking on the automated test (that the employee above created) to start, then reporting whether it passes/fails to someone else who figures out why it fails. This type of position is far less likely to require a CS/engineering degree and far less likely to be well compensated.