It doesn’t help that the Successful Adults around me tell me to major in something I will enjoy.
I’m leaning towards a science major but if I were profitable or I was overconfident I’d pick visual art.
Over the last 25 years, the total number of university students in the US has risen by over fifty percent. A lot more kids are going to college. However over that same time, the total number of students majoring in the most in-demand fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) has decreased. What are students majoring in instead?
Why are students majoring in soft-studies degrees that are not in demand and don’t pay? In part because government subsidizes all degrees. Government subsidizes (and sometimes guarantees) all student loans, regardless of what degree they’re in. You get grants regardless of what you major in etc. So lenders and universities have no incentive to really care what you major in. They get the $$. It doesn’t matter.
That distorts the natural information signaling of the higher-education market. Private lenders would otherwise offer much lower-interest loans more readily to biochem majors than queer theory majors. Many of these occupyers likely have degrees in fields with little-to-no career value, all of them government subsidized at least in part.
So what’s the lesson you should learn? It’s clear. College is expensive and the generic “college degree” doesn’t necessarily help much if at all. For most people:
- If you do go to college, do not major in a field that is not in demand unless you’re sure you want higher risk of a much harder life.
What majors are not in demand? Avoid:
- psychology
- psychology
- psychology
- we don’t need more psych majors
- sociology
- philosophy
- arts (visual, performing, studio, theater, whatever)
- communication
- journalism
- literature
- education
- social services
- history
- area “studies”
Obviously this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn about these subjects or even take classes in them—maybe do a minor. Just don’t major in them if you’re considering career prospects. And if the fields that are in demand absolutely do not appeal to you, consider putting off college or dropping out rather than racking up pointless debt and wasting your time.
This is probably the main reason (other than personal issues with opioid addiction/dependency) as to why I have yet to get a “4-year” university degree… if I chose the humanities/social sciences, my progress at university would quite likely be much more “impressive” than it currently is.
meh. Even though I’m really having to push myself forward for motivation to continue, I guess it would be of more benefit for me to continue the bio/eventual MCAT->med school route (sometime soon, lol.) Yet, a part of me deeply enjoys revoking my major declaration/sitting on an undeclared major, lol…
Every time that I think about the immense goal-driving motivational aspect of declaring a political science/philosophy major, attempting the LSAT, and aiming for law school instead, I end up losing about 4 semesters worth of classes wasted in trying to figure out what direction I want to truly go in, heh.
I need to choose quick and stick with it though… as the way things are currently, there’s no way I can afford much more of this same kind of languid passive confusion that has made up most of my undergraduate college existence thus far. Hm… if I go the humanities route, I could always look into doing research/teaching for a living, instead. Damn it, lol.
