I don’t know which degree to recommend, because I think you’re answering the wrong question.
The right question is “tell me, young person, what do you want to do for 8 hours a day, every day, every year?”.
And how do you want to do it?
Do you want to do it while sitting, or standing? Do you want to do it indoors or outdoors, maybe wearing uncomfortable safely equipment,( whether in a clean lab oxygen mask,or wearing a helmet on a construction site? )
Do you want to handle precision lab equipment, possibly with dangerous chemicals?
Do you want to get your hands dirty with blood and feces?
What kind of people do you want to deal with? (Adults? children? the general public? crime victims/social work cases? )
Many of the suggestions in this thread cover some of my questions:
Engineering:…electronic engineers might work in an office cubicle, civil engineers might work managing muddy construction sites.
Nursing degrees: anything from cleaning shitty diapers on geriatric patients while working night shifts, to operating x-ray machines in a clean suburban clinic. And if you love animals, a vet tech.
The question isn’t what degree to get, and then hope you will find work with that degree. The question is how you want to spend 8 hours every day all your life, and what degree will help you find that type of work .
The OP I think was thinking only in range of lifetime income from majors and related jobs. I think it may be different for different regions. My local newspaper a while ago printed the top five paying jobs in the county. The list included nurse practitioners, pharmacists, corporate officers and engineers. The majors leading up to them could be good ones to explore first.
My future daughter in law is a nurse anesthetist. She makes really good money. To get there she had to get a four-year nursing degree, pass the nursing boards,then work in the field, then get admitted into a three-year graduate program, then work as an intern then pass another set of boards.
So it’s not just a question of what’s the most lucrative, but also how much work you’re ready to put in (and how much student debt you want to take on) to get there.
For some people a two-year community college program might do the trick.
Right, are we asking “What is the most useful degree for getting a high paying job?” Or are we asking “What is the most useful degree for getting life-long satisfaction?”
For many people, those are two very different questions.
Yes, seeing so many recommend engineering I kept thinking “nope. nope. nope.” I would be miserable, even though I have enough basic intelligence to be at least mediocre. I would not want to spend my working life being mediocre.
Yeah, my nephew and my nephew-in-law both became RNs. My nephew had a lot of computer skills and was shanghaied into the computer side of things (though he kept trying to keep his clinical hand in). My nephew-in-law ended up in the ICU and loved it. He was even on TV wheeling out one of his patients who had been the first COVID patient in their unit to be seriously ill and survive.
I read (but no cite) the CO School of Mines has the highest job placement % of any college. So, among other things, you could learn to blow shit up for money. If you don’t mind working for extractive industries, it can be very very lucrative. A degree in construction management (which is as much IT as anything anymore) will also command big bux.
I remember when I was deciding what to do. What I heard then about engineering was that it was feast or famine. There would be a shortage and lots of people would be enticed into engineering programs and then there would be a glut. I had a colleague who said that when he decided to study math in the early 50s he would be poor but happy. Instead, Sputnik came along, math depts suddenly needed staff and he was (relatively) well off. When I got my PhD in 1962, I was one of about 250 in all of US and Canada. I also did relatively well. By 1970 there were more like 1000 and suddenly jobs were scarce and have remained so ever since. Also most universities have discovered it is much cheaper to hire part-time instructors for peanuts and no longer even both to have a professorial staff. So now if you studied math, you would be poor and unhappy since you would not spend your time doing research in math but researching where your next part-time appointment would come from.
I’ve known and am related to a number of engineers - chemical, geotech, aero, civil… The chem engineer is the only one making serious coin. He was the star of his class at a top tier school, and is quickly moving into the top ranks at a major oil refinery. (Of course, a 60 hr week is a light one for him, so take that into consideration.)
The rest of the engineers make what I consider GOOD money. But my impression is that engineers tend towards very good starting salaries, but they sorta level out over the course of one’s career. At some point, if you really want to continue to progress, it seems many if not most engineers have to move into management. So, just take that into consideration.
I think nursing is a VERY good career choice. I’ve never heard of a nurse having difficulty finding work pretty much anywhere, with pretty good starting salary. Pretty sure one of my golfing buddies said his recent grad daughter nurse got a starting salary over $100k. Might need to deal with odd schedules. And, you have to enjoy the work.
I’ve also known several accountants. none of whom had trouble finding well paid work.
I could imagine a math major with a finance minor might open up some pretty good opportunities to make major coin. As a general rule, I’d suggest any math and/or science, with some sort of a business minor. You can learn so much business and social sciences on the job, but if you don’t have the science/math background…
Of course, when discussing this sort of thing, there is really no substitute for being intelligent, with a serious assist from attending a top tier school. If you are just modestly intelligent and graduate in the 2d quartile of a middle tier school, well…
I’ve got a degree in EE and I have to agree with this.
Actually, a lot of people go into engineering because as 18, you really don’t know what you want to do in your life.
My story is hidden as it just my experience and it’s too long.
Summary
I really didn’t know what I wanted, and I had an interest in science so I went with engineering. It was interesting, and I did really well in my classes.
However, I wasn’t a creative type and I wasn’t really passionate about it.
I realized in my senior year that I just wasn’t going to make an inspired engineer, but I was too close to graduating to try to figure something out, so I took a lot of electives, including engineering law and a wide range of fields.
I went into technical sales, which was a much better fit. I knew enough about engineering that I was a better interface than most of the sales people.
This is not true. The minimum degree in all states to practice mental health counselling is a master’s degree. You don’t learn anything about being a therapist while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in psychology, all of the clinical training comes post-graduate. A bachelor’s in psychology is one of the least valuable 4 year degrees there is – it’s only useful as a jumping off point to go to grad school.
I’m pretty sure the same is true for LCSW/clinical social workers too.
That agrees with my experience. Quite a few companies in Silicon Valley (where I worked for many years) claimed to have parallel ‘technical’ and ‘management’ tracks. Not sure if any still do?
But the technical track really had an invisible ceiling, and many of the good engineers I knew eventually capitulated and took the ‘Management Lobotomy’…
One of my kids is an aero engineer. To his credit, at one point he decided he made enough that he didn't need to pursue more. So he could continue doing the tech work he enjoys, which provides enough time and to pursue his hobbies and maintain a comfortable lifestyle. That made me a heckuva lot prouder of him than I woulda been about hearing he made it to C-suite or bought a big house…
That’s pretty much the route I took. It always seemed to me that being a first line manager is rather like being a junior officer in WW1… you are expected to lead the troops out of the trenches into the machine gun firestorm…
Boy. That is irritating. All I can imagine is that my use of a dollar sign was interpreted as code for some weird formatting… This sorta thing really makes me dislike much tech (and yes, I’m sure there is some way I could adjust some settings, and I could proofread and edit my posts, after having done so while composing…)
There are a lot of careers where that exists. I can remember a study of architects where, if you didn’t make partner in something like five years you might as well go back to being a barista. And architects have to be licensed. Imagine something with fewer barriers to entry.
The general path is work on a project > work directly with a client > manage a project > sell projects to clients.
There are a lot of people who can manage projects perfectly adequately, but who lack the ability to identify and land new business. There are also a certain number, particularly in highly skilled technical fields, who have difficulty working with people who aren’t on the same skill level.
Multiple dollar signs in one paragraph are interpreted as a signal to switch to the math formula formatter / editor.
Just like multiple asterisks signal italics.
In each case prefacing the magic symbol with a \ means just treat it as the symbol, not the formatting command. So use \$ or \* when you want that symbol displayed.
That’s why technical people have to be vetted before even being allowed near a customer. And in tech fields there is a big difference between people who can get new business and negotiate contracts and technical marketing people who can talk to the technical people in potential client companies at their level and convince them that your company knows what it is talking about. Salespeople don’t have to know the tech stuff and tech people don’t have to know the sales stuff.
Here’s what distinguishes a marketing read tech person from one who isn’t. In a demo room, the response of the latter to a really stupid idea from a potential customer is “that’s a really stupid idea.” The response of the former is “that’s interesting. We should think about that.” (If they are already a customer you say “that’s interesting - we’ll think about putting that in the next release.”)
Don’t think a tech person won’t say “that’s a stupid idea.” I’ve heard worse. That person was never allowed near a demo booth again.
