Another problem with these sorts of comparison is that they are taking only how much the people are making, without regard to whether or not they are working in the field they majored in. In every one of the top ten, if you graduated with even mediocre grades, there’s likely to be a job waiting for you within that field, but five of the bottom ten (namely: drama, studio arts, graphic design, film/photography, and fine arts), are ones you actually have to have major talent in to beat out the competition for jobs in that field, and many people who choose those to major in quite frankly suck at it, but nevertheless have a grossly overinflated view of their own talents.
If you graduate with one of those, but have no talent, no employer has any use for any knowledge you might have gained. Well, Burger World might appreciate your dramatic rendering of “Do you want flies with that? Heh, heh, heh”…
I’d add that a lot of liberal arts majors - especially English, Journalism, Communications, and the like - end up being a kind of catch all. There are a lot of BA programs with these majors that aren’t exactly rigorous, and someone who isn’t really sure what they want, isn’t particularly interested in any field of study, and is just going to college to get a piece of paper tend to default to something inoffensive and easy.
Which is not to say that these are easy disciplines, but STEM majors have concrete, unyielding standards that must be met and cannot be faked. It’s just easier to slide through on liberal arts when your standard core curriculum gets you halfway to the hours necessary to graduate.
I think the lesson here is that if you are smart and motivated and apply yourself, no matter what degree you get, you can succeed.
There are certain degrees obtained that tend to weed out people who are less motivated, don’t apply themselves, etc. It’s not that the degrees themselves mean anything more, it’s just that there are fewer people who get those degrees because they tend to be more difficult to obtain.
But there are plenty of smart philosophy or communication degree earners who have a plan and are motivated to succeed, and they do.
For example, I have a physics degree, which most people simply think is impossible for them to get, and so there are relatively few people with physics degrees. This is only meaningful to a small subset of employers though. Most probably couldn’t give a rats ass that I have a physics degree.
What you are describing was often referred to as an “MRS degree”. Basically when a women gets some bullshit major so she can meet (and mary) a college guy. Or failing that, at least be educated enough to get an admin job so she can marry a partner at the law firm or investment bank where she works.
Seems to me that some of you expect too much from the lists. It’s just some statistics with a bit of flavor text.
Ask any American politician if the difference between 6.7% and 2.9% unemployment isn’t really that far apart. And the differences in median salary is telling when you recognize that medical assisting only requires an associate’s degree-- meaning less debt and more time in the workforce. And you missed how medical assisting has a 31% projected job growth while English has 6%. And unemployment rates for recent grads (5.4% and 9.2%).
The point of the list, in my opinion, isn’t that the 10 worst majors are complete dead ends and that everybody should pick one of the 10 best, regardless of aptitude. It’s more that some majors, which may offer interesting classes, and which universities will happily take your money to study, are over-crowded. If the student truly has a love for, say, graphic design, then nobody is saying that student shouldn’t go for it. But he or she should be aware of things like additional difficulty finding work after graduation and lower expected salary. If that same student would be just as happy being a pharmacist, why borrow trouble by majoring in an overcrowded field? Why not study something in demand?
Some of the 10 best career majors are also ones that attract women, like nursing. Also, if a woman drops out of the workforce, I’d think she wouldn’t count as unemployed. Maybe in a few years when she comes back she would, so I don’t know if it would be a net plus or minus to unemployment.
If you see college as a glorified vo-tech, I suppose Kipper snacks might have a point. But some people still believe in the concept of a liberal arts education. GASP!
Of course if you’re taking out loans to get through college and intend to pay those back, which is a good idea since they can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, then ideals sometimes need to be subservient to practicalities. Even so, much can still depend upon one’s ambition and time horizon. For example many graduate programs look for diversity in their entering classes and that applies just as often to the academic diversity as it does to other perhaps more familiar varieties. In those instances having a relatively “uncommon” major might actually be advantageous.
The difference between 6.7% and 2.9% unemployment is the difference between 93.3% and 97.1% employment. What this tells an individual is that either way there’s more than a nine out of ten chance that they will be employed. This is entirely different from what these unemployment rates for an entire nation say. 6.7% says that the nation has to support more than twice as many unemployed people as when it’s 2.9%.
Numbers like this are of limited use. This is especially true when the people writing the news story can’t be bothered to give all the statistics in a single complete table for all one hundred majors, apparently because they believe that most people are too stupid to read the statistics in a long table. Instead they write the story as being a top ten list versus a bottom ten list. Top ten lists are a way to entertain people rather than enlightening them.
What everyone who’s thinking about what they want to major in should do is to read the complete list of majors and the employment and salary facts. Then they should compare this with the majors that they’ve been considering. What they should not do is to instantly change their proposed major to the top one on the list, or one of the top ten, or one of the top twenty, or whatever. If everyone did that, the top majors on the list would then be overcrowded. Lists like this are a useful tool but not a simple directive for ordering your life.
I don’t know how common this is at other schools, but at my college Philosophy was one of the majors that weeded out people who weren’t motivated, etc. One of the requirements for the major was a course in formal logic. It had a reputation as the course that broke potential Philosophy majors. I remember once having to spend more than three hours solving a single proof for my homework. A lot of my classmates chose to just drop the course instead, which meant abandoning the major. Some who stuck with it couldn’t manage to pass in the end. There were only six of us in my Philosophy senior seminar.
Do the people stand around the deep fryer, or is the discussion encompassing all possible approaches to the deep fryer, or all the uses of the deep fryer or some combination thereof? Vague and ambiguous. But I do kinda get what you mean.
Well if you did your job correctly you saved lives, stopped injuries and reduced repair costs in the future and pissed of crooked and/or incompetent contractors. Hold your head high.
Many years ago, I worked with a law clerk who had majored in philosophy before going to law school. He took, and failed, the bar exam four times because he couldn’t just give the “correct” essays answers even though he knew those were what the testers were looking for. He just had to wax philosophical. Couldn’t control himself. Bright guy, personable, very interesting to talk to, but apparently determined to shoot himself in the foot. I don’t know what he’s doing now, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t practicing law. :rolleyes:
What the fuck is the point of a Pharmacy and Pharmacology major when you still have to go to Pharmacy School afterwards? Prepharmacy has to be the stupidest major I’ve ever heard of. (Hell, *most *pre- majors are lame, with pre-law probably taking the top spot.)
I have degree in Treatment Therapy Professions, and is lucrative, yes. Many said “Victor, organized crime is life for you” but I did not agree and look at me now.
My dad always said that a liberal arts major gets you two cents and a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, I listened to him and got a “practical” major which I’m very unsuited for, and he didn’t help pay for my college tuition so I felt doubly compelled to get something with a view to supposed subsequent earnings. I would have been much better financially off getting a liberal arts degree then teaching at least. My advice is to get whatever is the best degree for your aptitudes and interests even if it’s a liberal arts degree.
Most people I personally know who have liberal arts degrees did eventually end up having successful careers and make decent livings, though it might have taken a while for them to do so. These include:
History major – now teaches history at a small college in New England
Art major – now is an elementary school teacher
Ethnic studies major – now works in the regulatory department for a pharmaceutical company.
Probably very few Dopers are in the position of needing to choose a career, but some might be advising children or grandchildren:
Please, please don’t choose one of the ten best just because it is on that list. If something on the list grabs the kid’s fancy, then yeah, sure, go for it.
I went into electrical engineering because I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. It was a very “hot” field, possibly #1 or 2 on such lists back when I was in college. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 of my classmates had no real passion or even interest in the material. Many of them dropped out, but a few did earn degrees. I worked with such in my early career. My god, they sucked as engineers. A lot of the migrated to management, or technical sales, or even totally unrelated fields. One or two stuck with it, and were miserable every day of their work life.
EE ain’t all that great these days, BTW. I am a little suprised to see it still on the list in fact. I must just be out of touch with how poorly other fields are doing these days.
One of my favorite statistics is that film majors make more than biology majors. It always makes me laugh because my household has a film major and a bio major, and it very much holds true.
A BS in Bio basically qualifies you to wash test tubes. Without investing years in the long, unpleasant and poorly compensated process of getting a PhD, or getting another degree in healthcare, you’ve basically only have dead end jobs ahead of you. I wouldn’t advise anyone to major in bio without very serious thought to what their end game is, because the paths it opens are narrow.
With a liberal arts degree, you have a fairly open range of professional jobs ahead of you. I was, indeed, not very good at making films. But it turns out I am a good at project management and critical analysis. There are plenty of jobs for people with those skills.
THere is no such thing as a “good” and a “bad” major. There are only well-thought out and poorly-thought out decisions.
