“Which College Majors Lead Graduates to Their Parents’ Basements”
Gender Studies major.
But every major has varying numbers of graduates moving back in to their parents’ basements. There is no basement-proof college major out there. The individual and his/her choices are probably as important a variable as the choice of major. And correlation does not equal causation, i.e. just because certain majors have a lot of its graduates moving back into their parents’ basements does not necessarily mean that the major is THE cause.
“Only someone overly sensitive would find that statement to be bashing non-STEM majors or students. Frankly, I don’t understand why you, @bclintonk and others get so upset over this. It’s just data that parents and students can use to help make more informed academic and career decisions.”
How does that help a student make more informed decisions? If my kid isn’t interested in STEM, he won’t do well at it - so who cares how much money they make?
It seems to me that a considerable number of STEM majors go into departmental silos where all they are ever exposed to are other engineers, etc. so they just really seem not to have a clue about the myriad other functions needed to run a business. That’s why they don’t understand and deride marketing or HR or advertising or sales or governmental affairs or strategic planner. They seriously don’t get the concept of “real jobs” in fields outside their own. That’s nothing to brag about.
Whenever I hear people deriding humanities majors, or any major but STEM, it makes me wonder - do they never watch tv shows, never see/read/hear advertisements, never listen to music, never go to movies or plays, never go to a museum, never read a fiction or non-fiction book about history or politics, never send their children to school, do they never need a lawyer…
Do they just live in their own little boxed-up world where they and others just make things and study science?
Well, no, they don’t. But these critics sure cannot seem to think outside of that little boxed-up mindset…
It’s not due to being isolated only among engineering/STEM majors.
It’s more fields requiring greater quant proficiency required in their respective engineering/STEM majors are “superior” over those requiring less.
There’s also a bit of a quant one upsmanship among STEM majors. From what I’ve observed among aspiring STEM major HS classmates and some engineering/STEM relatives, the following pecking order shows which majors feel the most right to dismiss/trash talk those “lower than them” from top to bottom:
Physics/Math
Electrical/Computer Engineering/CS
Mechanical Engineering
Chemical Engineering/Chemistry/Pre-meds after first year
Civil Engineering/Materials Science
Industrial Engineering & Operations Research(Commonly known among other engineering majors as the “gut” business major equivalent in many Engineering divisions/colleges)
Biology & other natural sciences
Economics with heavy quant emphasis for Econ PhD
Economics without
They do, but regard producers of them in the same way a stereotypical snobby jerk would be dismissive towards a service worker in retail or fast food.
Unfortunately, this attitude is prevalent among a critical mass of STEM majors and even those in STEM related careers such as engineering, computer science, and medicine(especially those in more competitive specializations like Cardiology or Neurosurgery).
Part of this among some is rooted in resentment/anger over being bullied for being “Nerdy”* and passionate about STEM fields in many mainstream US K-12 environments. I can understand some of that as I’ve experienced a bit of this in K-8…though in my case it was mainly for being “nerdy”.
Meaning more academically engaged and achieving than average.
I refuse to think that science/math kids took more grief than the kids who are passionate readers (like classics for fun) or deeply into the arts (drama and/or band geek? Talk about a stereotype.) I was that kid- majored in humanities. (And have had steady employment in the top tax bracket for nearly 30 years) My kid is that kid- majoring theater- because for her college is about discovery and passion, not trying to figure out why will make the biggest paycheck.
I’m not saying that’s the reality. Am merely saying that’s the perception SOME aspiring STEM majors/STEM majors/those working in STEM fields with such resentments have.
Some of my insights into the STEM uber alles mentality comes from having a large number of engineers and science folks in my family; having attended a STEM-centered public magnet full of aspiring engineers/computer techies, pre-meds, and Science PhDs; and from being in frequent contact with engineers/computer techies** in my working and social life.
Speaking of arts or humanities geeks, one reason why some STEM folks who harbor the resentments I describe above would not only fail to relate to their situations, but also be resentful and jealous of them is a prevailing stereotypical perception that the arts/humanities geeks are much more socially popular and get more dates/sex/fulfilling relationships than they do. And yes, this perception is almost exclusively among the male STEM folks who hold such resentments.
** Some of the ones in my social life also have a foothold in the arts world as they also craft artistic works, write creatively, and/or play in various indie rock bands. One friend and former college classmate was a double-degree major at my undergrad LAC(viola/chemistry) who is now pursing a Chem PhD at an HYPSM school.
I can’t look it up right now, but the number to compare is mid-career salary. When I looked it up for myself and my DD2 a few months ago, it was true that nurses made more than English majors the first year out of school. Their average salaries were equal by midcareer. Now it’s true that all the years they weren’t equal affected lifetime earnings, but given a modest difference, not a lifetime in the basement, shouldn’t one follow one’s passion?
I have a niece with a MA in art history. We all were worried about that major. She is in her late 20s now, self-supporting, and travelling the world to set up art expos (in Venice this month).
It’s a bit silly to pick a major to avoid the basement.
Aside: at one university I know, the gender studies students do fabulously because of its robust internship program
Again- just my opinion- but choosing a college, a career, or pretty much anything based on fear (i “have to” do it this way b/c I want to be successful…) is not an excellent recipe for a happy life.
Not a criticism, but an observation: I strongly suspect those two (slightly edited) sentences are highly correlated with one another. I could have written a version of both. I majored in what amounted to Literary Theory. My wife constructed what in today’s world would be a major in Women’s and Gender Studies out of a double major in Psychology and American Studies. We have had satisfying, highly paid careers. We encouraged our children to pursue what interested them in college, not what would lead to some defined set of jobs. (And, by the way, our English Lit major far outearns our Quanty Social Science major and, ten years after entering college, far outearned the median for her very quant-heavy college, at least based on the Federal data.)
That said, I think I understand how kids and families that are not comfortable economically and do not have a family safety net see “discovery and passion” as frivolous, and want their higher education to be about qualifying them for a high-paid career.
"That said, I think I understand how kids and families that are not comfortable economically and do not have a family safety net see “discovery and passion” as frivolous, and want their higher education to be about qualifying them for a high-paid career. "
I understand this too. But piling on to the lack of understanding as to how the high paid career labor markets operate- with threads like this one- doesn’t seem to be a very helpful solution- and is somewhat patronizing to boot. I know first gen college graduates who are stunned to discover that the job they thought they were “training” for is being held by someone with a degree in what they consider basketweaving. It is hard to explain to the new grad with a degree in sports management from random third tier college that the NFL (which is heavily populated by elite college grads with a bunch of humanities students thrown in there) or ESPN need people who write well. Think critically. Can read. etc. I had a recent counseling session with a nice young kid who wants to be a sports agent. I walked him through what that meant- both educationally and intellectually- and he was horrified. (he doesn’t like numbers, isn’t good at math, but thinks he’s an “excellent negotiator”. I pointed out that an MLB heavy-hitter isn’t hiring an agent who can’t “do math”. We’re not talking differential equations here- just basic multiplication).
So every time someone posts here about how studying history leads to unemployment, I think of the kids I know in real life. Who are told to major in something “practical”- and then often discover that “practical” (leisure studies, event management, real estate management) is a code word for “not great employment prospects, hope you don’t have too many loans”.
@JHS you have a very valid point. But I don’t think the posters on this thread/forum who have such disdain for anyone who chooses a non STEM major (including inferring that they are automatically less intelligent and/or less driven) fall into what you describe.
@blossom : My (admittedly anecdotal) experience with the sort of major you are describing is a little different. One of my young cousins – someone who as an infant required a lot of high-intervention medical care, had modest learning disabilities, and never did especially well in school – majored in hospitality management or something like that at a directional public university. Her first job post-college was a nepotism thing working for another cousin of ours for low pay at a tiny ad agency in a small city doing event planning. Not quite a decade (and three jobs) later, she is an extremely successful event planner working for a global ad agency in New York City, loving her career and her life, and earning an astonishing paycheck. Event planning turned out to be something she was really good at, that the world also needed. I am not certain she would have found her niche, or had the confidence to do well enough at it from the start that she kept getting more, tougher assignments, were it not for the supremely practical, almost entirely nonacademic training she got in college.
My wife is a mission-driven social reformer who has spent her career bouncing back and forth between the public and nonprofit sectors. She claims that she never heard of Cornell’s Hotel Management School until she was and adult, and she maintains an alternate fantasy life in which she went there and had a satisfying, lucrative career developing and running hotels (something she would have done quite well).
Forget sports management, though. I would put people who start sports management programs in jail.
@toowonderful : You are right about the contempt. I have three friends who are having or had trouble with a child who is/was completely focused on money and technology, and utterly contemptuous of humanities. Their fathers were all classic humanities majors – Spanish Lit, Art History, Linguistics – with very successful careers, in one case to the point of .01% wealth. The parents were all about discovery and passion; the kids’ passion was competing to see who made the most money, and they had no use for education except as a particular set of unpleasant levels they had to beat in the video game of their lives.
Mid career pay levels from this survey (from Payscale, so take the limitations of that into consideration):
Major 10th %ile median 90th %ile
English 33,400 64,700 133,000
Music 26,700 55,000 134,000
Philosophy 35,500 81,200 168,000
Nursing 47,600 67,000 98,300
Physician Asst 66,400 91,700 124,000
Note that the first three majors in the table above are high-Gini, while the last two are low-Gini. Purely from a mid-career earnings perspective, the last two are “safer” in terms of the low end being higher, but have lower potential at the top end.
Of course, pay levels after graduation should not be the only criterion for selecting a college major, although it is understandable that most students will consider them as one of various criteria (as they wonder how to pay off their student loans).
While I understand better than just about anyone that poor kids don’t have a safety net, I don’t like the tendency to try to scare poor kids away from the humanities as though it might be a gamble. The humanities shouldn’t be reserved for the rich.
(Says the former full Pell, humanities student who couldn’t imagine having majored in anything other than the humanities.)
^Absolutely, @romanigypsyeyes . Another first-gen Humanities major here.
I terrified my mother, I think, when I decided to major in literature. But - it’s all been good. I’d do it all over again, even taking the time off to work in a factory to afford to get the degree…
I cannot imagine having worked so hard to study something I had no passion for and interest in…
Many white-collar entry-level opportunities for Humanities students, even first-gen ones…
You see this all the time in computer science. A lot of people think that software engineers run the whole world. It’s common enough that people, myself included, have pre-made snarky responses towards this attitude. Have fun trying to run a successful software startup without sales, legal, and marketing departments.
Agreed as another former near-full ride scholarship student from a low-income family who ended up majoring in a field which could be classified as a humanities or a social science depending on one’s perspective and methodological approach.
Granted, I also did enough self-studying/tinkering with computer technology that I was able to hold part-time/summer jobs as a computer techie and later, land a job in few computer technology startups and some IT/IS departments.
I was fortunate that most older relatives, even the heavily pre-professional side with a heavy presence of engineers didn’t view undergrad as a form of vocational training and would be horrified if their own kids expressed such attitudes* when it came time to applying to colleges.
Granted, most did came of age when a college/university education was supposed to be an education to expand one’s intellectual horizons and to further hone one’s intellectual chops to a finer point and when if one was solely interested in vocational training…the student/family be expected to find themselves an apprenticeship/vocational school or to start working and learning on the job…not college.
If they did, their inclination was to conclude they're not intellectually mature/ready for a college education and have them work a full-time job, join the military, or if they had the financial means and the child showed some seriousness...start them out in a small business.
“I was fortunate that most older relatives, even the heavily pre-professional side with a heavy presence of engineers didn’t view undergrad as a form of vocational training”
I was fortunate in that the only “older relatives” who were involved in my education were my parents who were funding it. How tiresome to have to have the approval of a bunch of nosy aunts, uncles or cousins unable to mind their own business.