Myths About Choosing a College Major | Hacker News Reader

Myths About Choosing a College Major

nytimes.com

59 pointsdenzil_correa127 comments

RE: Myth 2. The theory I’ve heard is that women choose those lower paying fields because they want the flexibility those field offer as that makes child rearing easier. More government support for child care and longer school hours would therefore make it possible for more women to go into more demanding and higher paying fields.

I also suspect that many men choose higher paying and “harder” fields because they’re expecting that it will make them more desirable to women. Women don’t feel that same pressure. In other words, rich men are more willing to marry a teacher or social worker. Rich women, not so much—they want to marry someone even richer.

Just as a tangent, the term for this is 'hypergamy' and one can find more research and writing on it searching for that.

The term "hypergamy" has been almost entirely co-oped by redpillers, in my experience.

The academic inaccuracies of some internet subculture doesn't make the phenomenon less adequate to mention.

I think they probably just thought that the term hypergamy sounds cool, so they adopted it to appear scientific.

>I think they probably just thought that the term hypergamy sounds cool, so they adopted it to appear scientific.

I 100% agree with this, however the way they use the term does fit in perfectly with its definition.

Redpillers? What is this? English is not my first language. Thank you

Redpillers are a group of people that have associated around the concept of "redpill."

"Redpill" has come to mean many things on the internet, but all trace their origin to the movie The Matrix, in which the character Morpheus offers the character Neo two pills: one red, one blue. If neo takes the red pill, he will be pulled out of the Matrix (a computer simulation) and showed the real world. If he takes the blue pill, he will continue to exist in the computer simulation and can pretend it's the real world.

In the case I was referring to (redpillers using "hypergamy"), "redpill" or "to be redpilled" means to believe that male/female dynamics are entirely sex-driven regardless of context (professional, sports, relationship, etc) and furthermore those dynamics are governed by rules established early in human evolution - for example, they believe women will only want to be in a sexual relationship with strong men that can provide for them, or that women universally prefer to work as little as possible while being provided for by men.

A redpiller himself would probably take a mildly different definition than this - they would try to sell the community on its less politically incorrect values, such as the tenant that men should focus on self-improvement, bodily health, careers, etc. However, this is typical cult behavior, and the darker parts of redpill are what truly drive the community.

thank you!

Basically a big part of the alt-right coalition with retrograde ideas on gender.

Short answer: it's a Reddit community full of idiots.

More relevant answer in this case: it's a term frequently used as a cudgel to shut down conversation. It's a fallacy of association, and thus can be safely ignored.

"I like dogs."

"Oh yeah? So did Hitler!"

That sort of thing.

If someone started talking about Lebensraum it'd probably be fair to say the idea is associated with Hitler.

|Myth 5: It’s important to choose a major early.

I mean, I think it's good that Georgia / Arizona State have created "meta-majors" to give students more exposition on specific majors.. but I wish high-schools would provide that information before students sign up for a 20k-40k+ / year experiment to find out they don't want to become w/e it is they originally signed up for..

When I was a sophomore in high-school, a teacher went out of her way, tapped into her network and helped me land my first professional programming gig. I was still probably going to be a programmer as I had been coding for 5+ years already, but being exposed to that environment helped re-affirm that it was the path that I wanted to take.

I resonate with this so much. I honestly feel incredibly lucky to end up where I did. My sophomore year of high school, I took a programming class almost entirely on accident.

I took a business class with a teacher my freshman year and really liked her. The only other elective she taught was an intro to C++ course. It's like a light switch went off in my head that this is what I am supposed to do with my life.

I had my sophomore and junior year to do projects and really solidify that this is the thing for me. I had plenty of help a long the way. I had a few particularly great professors and a life-changing internship at a startup. I feel so lucky to have these experiences that are almost random chance that things worked out for me.

I can't imagine what it's like to try to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life with only a high school classes and possibly a part-time job. How can you decide you want to do something with such a narrow and outsider perspective? I had much more exposure than most to what I wanted to do and it still took a lot of luck and wrong turns to get here. I can't imagine how hard it must be with even more limited exposure.

I also had a clear path thanks to some volunteer work I lucked into around age 15 mixed with my own computer obsession, but most kids don't have that.

I don't see how you could do it outside of the usual "XYZ after school club".

When I was in high school, I had summers off. I volunteered at the "Main library" of my county...a huge library and volunteered in their computer lab. I also volunteered at the local science museum and continued to do so on weekends during school. I have to travel to downtown, which required me to take a public bus.

For graduation, we are required some volunteer hours. If we do more hours, we get special recognition.

Volunteering is a great way to get some exposure to different careers and areas...There are a lot of opportunities of people just want to look.

Coming from a European country, I really have a hard time understanding this no-major thing. As a matter of fact I even have trouble understanding majors at all. Across the pond, when you go to university to study X you study X (and if X requires Y as a prerequisite also Y). Nobody prevents you from walking into a lecture hall in comparative linguistics if you are studying biology, you just won't get any credits for it. Experiencing a large range of topics, helping you understand what you want to do, and teaching you to think is supposed to be the role of high school around here.

The goal of a liberal arts education (which is not unique to the United States) is to provide a well-rounded base of knowledge combined with critical thinking skills. For college students on this track, specifying a major becomes less important.

Majors are still important in a liberal arts education, unless you're majoring in Liberal Arts, in which case your career prospects are probably going to suffer substantially.

Can you graduate without a major? It never even occurred to me to try or ask anyone about it.

Some schools have an interdisciplinary degree which is close, I think. If I recall, you essentially have an advisor that oversees the classes you take and makes sure that you have "enough" credits in each subject (STEM, literature, humanities, etc) but you don't have to declare that X subject will be the focus of my studies.

If you don't have a major, then what are you really graduating from? Some schools have majors called "University Studies" that lets you essentially be undeclared for awhile until you figure out what you want to do but you can't graduate with this on a diploma. You still have to pick something. If you want a liberal arts education, then choose majors like English. If you want something specific, pick something specific.

There are many people that think they know what they want to do in high school, and maybe even get some experience doing it, but then begin to hate it once they've been doing it intensively for more than a year. The purpose of being a student isn't to restrict yourself to a specific set of knowledge you expect to learn; it's to explore knowledge and develop important skills for use in the workplace. Granted things vary depending on the profession you end up applying for.

Actually, at my uni, you probably could attend comparative linguistics. It wouldn´t help you get the biology degree much, but you still would receive credits.

I.e. my wife, as she completed her molecular-genetics masters (120 credits, after 180 credit bc. in biology), would have over 20 credits in choir singing and additional 20 in finish language?

agree. The 2 years core curriulum in the US college majors is an indictment of US high schools IMHO. I like the system here in Germany a lot better, its not perfect but it doesnt waste your time as much and gives you way more options.

I think most Americans have a lot of resistance to the idea of a system that consigns you to a particular fate by age 10.

Seriously. What happens if, as I did in the US, I'm convinced I want to be a doctor but at age 19 realize I really don't like chemistry, nor am I particularly good at it, and want to do something different?

In the specific example, you'd probably noticed that you don't like chemistry in your high school chemistry classes already.

And if you didn't, you'd switch to a different university/specialization after the first year or so, transferring credits for overlapping courses if there are any. That's not a very big deal, at least in Germany switching once even means you'll get the state education loans for longer if you need them.

In Europe if you wan't to be a doctor and you were 19 you'd already be in first year of a specific medicine degree.

The US doesn't track people early into career-focused educations but prefers a broader - or depending on your viewpoint, less focused - education.

For example, someone studying computer science in college may be required to also take courses in fine arts, history, and English literature.

This can feel like a waste of time for those who are definite that they want, say, a CS degree. I think the US should have more technical/career colleges, along with a higher respect for them.

But it can also give more options to change fields as an adult.

Parent's point is that high school should serve as the broad base of understanding in civics, arts, history, lit, etc. and by the time you're in university, you should be focusing on your major.

Yes, I believe I got that.

My point is that I don't agree. I think the US system "gives you way more options" because students aren't specializing so early.

Why should you focus on your major though all of college, to the (near) exclusion of other topics?

While I look at the sample schedules at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#Timetable... and wonder about all the time wasted in religious studies.

I wouldn't say "wasted," even if you are not religious. A lot of European and early American history was somewhat difficult for me to penetrate until, as an adult, I developed an interest in learning about Christianity (its history, doctrines of different denominations, etc.) and suddenly a lot of things made more sense to me. If the "religious studies" courses include other religions, so much the better, as I don't doubt that having more understanding of the world's religions would illuminate world history in a similar way for me.

How much time do you think is needed?

In the "Sample grade 10 Gymnasium timetable", there's as much time spend on "religious studies" as "biology" (2 periods per week). In the "Sample grade 12 Gymnasium timetable", it's also 2 periods per week, and equal to the time spent on "Politics-Economy".

This seems well more than needed in order to understand the history.

Is the high school-level religious education in Germany really taught as a comparative religion that includes the world's religions?

The discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_education#Germany says that most of the German states teach "religious (Christian) education in close cooperation with the churches", and the teachers are "paid by the state and are bound to the German constitution, as well as answerable to the churches for the content of their teaching."

The discussion at https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/germany/relig... :

"A standard part of the public school curriculum in Germany is religious instruction (Religionsunterricht). For the most part, this is confined to Catholic or Protestant students, but some states also offer instruction for Jewish students. In Berlin three public schools also offer instruction for Buddhists. Although religious instruction is a required subject (according to the German Constitution!), students above a certain age (or by parental request) can opt out for personal reasons.

"Only in recent years has there been any discussion of offering Islamic instruction for students belonging to Germany’s largest non-Christian religious minority, but no German state (Bundesland) currently offers instruction for Muslim students in German, in the same way that Christian instruction is offered. ... What about the various forms of the Muslim religion (Sunni, Shiite, Alevite, etc.) and ethnic divisions (Turk, Albanian, Pakistani, etc.)?"

This makes it sound like the German courses teach the tenets of a specific faith, and are not a comparative/world religion training.

Lastly, understanding religious is important to an understanding of history. Does the German religious history really cover some of the negative sides of religion like the (early) Christian justification for slavery (eg, the Romanus Pontifex, Dum Diversas, and Inter Caetera)?

I make no warrants about what they teach in Germany because I'm not German, nor particularly well versed on the topic.

You were responding to my statement "While I look at the sample schedules at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#Timetable.... and wonder about all the time wasted in religious studies" so I thought you were still on the topic of education in Germany.

Even if we shift topics, my first question still stands - how much time do you think should be spent on comparative religion classes at the high school level in the US?

As a follow-up, which course should it replace?

The question doesn't make a lot of sense since there is no standardized curriculum, nor am I saying that we necessarily need to have religious education for the entirety of schooling (although I think more than we get would be reasonable considering the importance of questions like iconoclasm to early settlers). The sentiment I was responding to was specifically that time spent learning the subject is wasted. Time doesn't have to be spent in a 100% optimal way, however we measure that, to not be wasted.

Everything I said is in regards to the top-level comment by jfaucett at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15706042 . I used the term "wasted" because that jfaucett wrote that "the system here in Germany ... doesnt waste your time as much" as the US.

You changed to a different topic. I did not argue "that time spent learning [comparative religious studies] is wasted", yet you bring it up again.

Since there is no required religion courses in public schools in the US (that I know of), I of course agree that there is no standardized curriculum.

It appears that most federal states in Germany has religious education for the entirety of schooling. It also appear that you may think that is excessive, compared to your preferences.

Does this mean that we agree?

> Since there is no required religion courses in public schools in the US (that I know of), I of course agree that there is no standardized curriculum.

Not what I mean. There is no federal, standardized curriculum at all in the US (although all the standardized tests with competencies, Common Core, etc. are strides in this direction), so asking me what course I think should be put aside doesn't make a lot of sense, since there isn't one set of courses to think about in the first place. But, sure, while it makes sense for religious schools (e.g., Catholic private schools), I don't think public schools need to be making religious studies a core subject on par with science, math, English, etc.

I know that there is no federal curriculum in the US. Then again, I wasn't being that restrictive. I was referring to any required religion courses in public school, including state and local level.

Some schools have voluntary courses like "Bible as literature". I believe some states teach world religions as part of a history or social studies course - that may be required. I remember learning about the basic tenets of Islam in world history class in 9th grade.

I also know that it makes sense for religious schools, which is why I wrote "public schools".

In most German states (which also has a federal system), public schools do make "religious studies a core subject on par with science, ...." The point of my original reply was that I felt that this was not needed.

I'm glad that we have concluded that we both agree, even if it took quite some time.

I don't know why you have to be so condescending. You don't have to keep replying if you don't think the conversation is productive.

??? I keep thinking you don't understand what I'm saying, and hoping that with a bit more explanation it becomes clear.

I do find it annoying that you seem to be constructing counter-arguments to statements I never made, and indeed thought I specifically avoided.

It looks like we are both on the same page (regarding the importance for mandatory religious education classes in the US), while at the beginning it seems like you were opposed to my original comment.

I thought this conversation was at an end.

Alright, then let it be so.

> Across the pond, when you go to university to study X you study X (and if X requires Y as a prerequisite also Y). Nobody prevents you from walking into a lecture hall in comparative linguistics if you are studying biology, you just won't get any credits for it. Experiencing a large range of topics, helping you understand what you want to do, and teaching you to think is supposed to be the role of high school around here.

Do you only get credit for X and its prerequisites?

In the US, it generally works like this. If you want to get a degree in X, you "major" in X. There will be four kinds of classes you have to take to get that degree.

1. Classes in X and its prerequisites. You will need to take a certain number of units of X. That will come from a mix of classes that are required for all X majors, and classes you can choose freely from the school's X classes. There may be things kind of in between optional and required, such as multiple sequences of related classes where you have to choose one of the sequences.

2. Specific classes that everyone has to take regardless of major. This set may be empty in some schools.

3. Breadth classes. For example, at Caltech everyone has to take a certain number of units of humanities and social sciences, equivalent to taking one humanities or social science class per term. 1/4 must be humanities, 1/4 social sciences, and the remaining 1/2 whatever mix you want.

4. The school may have a total unit requirement, that may be higher than the sum of the number of units required by #1, #2, and #3. You can generally choose these from anything the school offers.

So, over here you probably would get credit as a biology major if you decided to take comparative linguistics.

You "have a hard time understanding"? What's your question? You just seem to be stating it's different.

Part of the European system is that you are admitted to a certain college and only to study a certain subject.

I got into my college ('university') to study computer science, and I had interview and tests to check aptitude for that specific subject, but I wouldn't have been admitted to study something like medicine or music instead as I wouldn't have had the aptitude for that.

When you go to college in the US does one of the departments have to say 'yes this person had aptitude for our major'? Is it possible to get into a college and then realise you don't have aptitude for any of the majors?

Typically, when referring to college in the US, people mean university. Universities are made up of colleges (College of Business, College of Arts & Science, College of Fine Arts, etc). Colleges within universities can have their own admission criteria so if, for example, you started majoring in History and failed all of your classes and wanted to study Finance, the College of Business could reject your application to change majors into their college. However, what usually happens is someone starts majoring in X, eventually realizes that they want to major in Y and there is no problem with them switching.

Different universities work differently in the US. Some have categories of majors, like UW [0], where some are free to declare but others have requirements/prerequisites.

[0]: http://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/academic-planning/maj...

"The top quarter of earners who majored in English make more over their lifetimes than the bottom quarter of chemical engineers."

This is an important statement. Success in a field is as important as the field itself. Those who lack the IQ or personality for an area of study and subsequent employment will find their life harder than it needs to be. My philosophy: there is value in being in the top ten percent--not that I've always lived by those words.

While the earnings chart is very compelling. I'm a little confused by the labelling. Why are the high and low end of the horizontal bars set to the 10th and 90th percentile? Does this mean the data point used as the high on the chart is the average (or median) of the sample of earners in the 90th percentile?

90th percentile is probably used so that outliers (Bill Gates) don't overly skew the bar charts.

I don't understand your final question though. 90th percentile means that, for the data set, 90 percent earned less and 10 percent earned more. The end of the bar is the 90th percentile mark.

Ah, okay. That kind of makes sense. If that is true, then the writer's comment about quartiles is wrong--or at least misleading. The outliers thing came to my mind too; it's such a big factor.

>Dr. Carnevale wouldn’t speculate as to why women make their choices.

I'll help him out. Go watch a Norwegian documentary called Hjernevask (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask). A comedian wonders aloud why, in the most gender-equal country in the world, women still prefer lower-paying jobs. Its success led Norway to shut down its Gender Studies Institute.

Not everything is the cause of rampant misogyny.

I would think that it's, at least, less of a mystery in Norway (or the Western Europe/Nordic model in general) -- at high marginal rates of taxation, and a wide variety of public benefits for free, there's less of an upside to making more money, so the enjoyment of the work itself matters more.

The comparison is between two genders in the same country, and not two different countries.

"in the most gender-equal country in the world" is inviting a comparison across countries, and the point is relevant regardless.

I'm really tired of hearing moralizing about people picking the wrong college major. Unless you have a crystal ball and can see four years into the future you're better off just studying something you care about; you've got a whole lifetime to do stuff you don't really want to do.

I'd be tired of it if most of the people complaining about having a degree and not being able to get a job didn't major in something which is obviously not a good choice if you want to make money. What I am tired of is anyone suggesting that getting something like an Art History degree is a good idea for someone who doesn't already have enough money sitting around that they're not going to have to worry about their income. Pursuing your dreams is great and everything but not when you have to make the resulting poverty everyone else's problem.

This is exactly the kind of moralizing I meant

I didn't think the grandparent comment is "moralizing". They aren't saying your choice of major is "good" or "bad". They are saying that when you make a sub-optimal(in relation to expected future income) degree choice then you should expect a sub-optimal result and take responsibility for your own decisions rather than complain about "the economy" or "the system" or "capitalism in general".

Yes, that's an argument I'd characterize as moralizing.

I'm not saying doing what I described is immoral. It's just incredibly stupid.

Talking about how it's your personal responsibility to pay for your degree and you're to blame if you can't get a job, because you chose the wrong degree, is exactly what I am talking about.

Whose responsibility is it?

Education is a social good and should be funded at least in large part by the state, is my stance. I think the framework of "investment" and "consumers" is a totally wrong one to look at it in.

I agree with you that it "should be", but the fact remains that currently isn't. "Investment" and "Consumer" might be tainted words for you but they are accurate descriptions for our current system. So shouldn't students make their massive life decisions based on the current reality of the education system rather than some imaginary future-state thats more "fair"?

Perhaps, but it doesn't follow that it's necessary or unavoidable to write screeds about how anyone who ends up in a bad situation is to blame because they didn't pick the right major.

The problem is some kids get one shot at college, via scholarship or otherwise, and some universities (including mine) have no barrier to entry to a given college (say engineering) if you declare it your major on entry, but have extraordinary transfer requirements.

That whole system sounds ridiculous. If I'm paying five or six figures to attend a university I should be able to register for whatever class I want and change my major at any time.

Well I don't disagree, but at a state school with 40,000 in the undergrad class I guess they need barriers.

For the most part, they have barrier at entry in the form of evaluating against a different competitive pool of applicants and a different limited number of slots.

Well it sounds like what really should be changed is the transfer requirements then.

I think this general idea, popular though it is, is troubling. At 17 years old, what kid knows what their life passion will be? How can they have a life passion without much life experience or knowledge? Why do we expect people to work a "whole lifetime" doing stuff they don't really want to do?

I think encouraging young people to learn marketable, in demand skills, in order to get a good paying job is solid advice. I wish this advice were coupled with encouraging some frugality, which would free most people up to do what they really want to do, without much concern for finances, by the time they're 30.

> I think this general idea, popular though it is, is troubling. At 17 years old, what kid knows what their life passion will be?

Well, they don't, of course; that's why so many of them end up changing their majors. At least it's a better ideal than asking 17-year-old kids to anticipate what the job market will be like in four years.

> Why do we expect people to work a "whole lifetime" doing stuff they don't really want to do?

How many people would be doing the exact same job they're doing now if they had no need for the money? It's not zero percent, but it's certainly not 100 percent either.

> At least it's a better ideal than asking 17-year-old kids to anticipate what the job market will be like in four year

At virtually any time in modern history, majoring in engineering is going to be more lucrative than majoring in History or English. Accounting, mathematics, law, etc. all have pretty high likelihood of continuing to be lucrative fields. Let's also not discount trade schools. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC workers, masons, etc. make solid livings, and get to start their careers ~4 years earlier. These are good options that we often neglect / look down upon.

> How many people would be doing the exact same job they're doing now if they had no need for the money? It's not zero percent, but it's certainly not 100 percent either.

Yea. I assume it's much closer to 0 than than 100 percent.

Interesting you mention law, since there's an epidemic of unemployed and underemployed graduates of law schools with huge debt burdens they cannot afford to pay. Which I think illustrates my point rather nicely.

What I “don’t really want to do” for the rest of my life is be unemployable because I got an Ancient Chinese Art History degree and struggling paying off student loan debt in the process.

I’ve never told my children to “pursue their dreams” as their career without one eye toward being able to support themselves.

Scott Adams sums it up perfectly.... https://www.slideshare.net/Scottadams925/goals-are-for-loser...

Getting a degree in liberal arts does not make you "unemployable," as argued in the article this discussion is about.

The study the article linked to in support of his argument didn't say anything about liberal arts majors are more employable - just that social skills make you more employable.

http://www.nber.org/digest/nov15/w21473.html

I can attest to the idea that improving my social skills played a large part in the rapid ascent in my career over the past nine years compared to the nine years prior being stuck in a dead end job.

I thought the proposition we were discussing was whether liberal arts majors are "unemployable," not whether or not they're "more employable" (than whom?).

The study that was cited by the article doesn't mention whether people with liberal arts degrees are employable - just people with "social skills".

There is a giant table of earnings by major and a discussion of the figures

How come Chemical Engineering is right up the top of earnings? As someone who dropped out of chemical engineering to be a software developer, I clearly made the wrong choice ;-)

Chemical engineering as any engineering field requires rigorous studying and the jobs can be quite demanding (working in plants). It's not uncommon to start at $90k in an area like Houston where that can go a good way. The catch is you get sent all over the world to India...etc. This is for working at a place like Dow.

In those sorts of charts, chemical engineering typically includes petroleum engineering, which can be pretty lucrative.

I have a weirdly specific insight into this.

I was an oil and gas recruiter in Houston between 2014-2015... right on the cusp of the most recent O&G price crisis. So I graduate, watch all my engineering friends get nice fat 90k/year or even higher salaries (this is Houston equiv to ~120-130 Bay Area), start buying big trucks, big houses, spending like crazy. My candidates start doing the same, except for the oldest and most experienced, who would always warn about valleys in the field.

Lo and behold in 2014 gas prices plummets from something like 100$/barrel to 40, and suddenly almost every single one of my Chem E buddies is out of a job, and all my candidates are getting laid off, and I myself am busting my ass to keep employed because now we have maybe 2-3 jobs popping a month that get instantly targeted by every recruitment firm in the city, let alone thousands of unemployed candidates.

Anyway, one of my chem E buddies that was really good at saving money fucks off to SF to do Hack Reactor and has a great time of it. One by one more of my friends do similar, either doing a bootcamp or just jumping straight into automation type jobs. One of them even swapped to patent law. A lot of my candidates start putting things like "python" and "Matlab" on their resumes.

Long story short, the O&G industry can make you a lot of money, but it is extremely variable, and you get extremely specialized. A mech E with "rotating equipment" can't do a "static equipment job," according to hiring managers. Chem E can't do liquid natural gas jobs, even if they've got 15 years experience on all sorts of different projects. Etc. A lot of my candidates and friends just decided they'd go for a field with a lower barrier to entry and a much lower barrier for skill transfer.

(I did as well in the end)

Seems like dotcom burst.

"As someone who dropped out of chemical engineering.."

You answered your own question ;-)

This is terrible advice (IMO obviously). On the statistical level it basically amounts to "disregard the currently accepted best practices".

On the individual level none of it matters. The right school won't make a high achiever out of someone who's been a low achiever for 18yr and the wrong one won't make a low achiever out of someone who's a high acheiver.

Depending on where you start in life (i.e. social and economic class) you're probably only going to be able to go up/down a few rungs anyway and returns on time spent stressing over having a strategic plan for college diminish very quickly.

I take particular issue with 5. You should know what you want to do unless you've got so much money and time that you don't mind pissing a way a lot of both taking classes you don't actually need.

I partially agree with 3/4. New grads are hired for who they know or what they know. Nobody cares if you've got a major in psychology if you've spent the last two years working with some education grad students writing software to teach kids math.

Although I'm not sure it's something that can be manipulated for gain, I do think some people do better in different university environments.

I'll probably get downvoted for this, but my advice: If you're graduating from high school and don't know what you want to do for a living, join the military - it'll grow you up fast and will provide you with great options for financing your education once you do figure it out.

I'm not going to downvote you for it, but this is terrible advice. If you're graduating form high school and don't know what you want to do for a living, don't make a multi-year commitment to a job that has a very significant chance of ruining your life. You can get out of waiting tables after 12 months if you want to, but you can't just drop out of the army, and waiting tables has a significantly smaller chance of removing one or more of your limbs.

Depending on where you get your figures from, somewhere between 80-85% of the jobs in the US military are non-combat, where there is as little risk of losing a limb as there is going about your day-to-day civilian life and losing a limb in a car crash.

If you didn't find something in your breadth-but-not-depth high school studies that grabbed your interest to the point where you decide that it's worth pursuing a four-year college commitment to study it in further depth, I struggle to understand how twelve months in a minimum wage job (a repetitive daily routine that affords you little if any spending money) would help clarify a direction.

Your cautionary advice could also be directed to students who are unsure what they want to study and willing to go into serious debt to aimlessly explore. Sure you sign a year-long contract, but the military pays for it.

And while waiting tables, you might consider community college. It's a lot cheaper way to try some things and figure out what you want.

Agreed. The military can be a fine gap couple of years. My brother did that after a year of college and he was already doing quite well. The mistake he made was a 4 year enlistment which is a long time when you are young. And then there's inactive reserve. And then there's the backdoor draft that Bush+Cheney used in the GWOT. So while it can be a fine choice, be careful.

https://www.thebalance.com/what-the-recruiter-never-told-you...

This is a good article in my opinion but it just requires context, situational application, and some reading between the lines.

#1 is certainly true and is good to be aware of. CS doesn't usually see this, but many physical sciences do see it.

#2 I didn't know was a myth, so I'll be conveniently ignoring that one.

#3 is absolutely true, but as others have mentioned is not very applicable to individuals who will usually go to the best school they can get into and afford. However, it's a very useful consideration when it comes to politics, social considerations, and more.

#4 is absolutely true. You can make a good living with any degree, but you should always keep the practicality in mind no matter what major you are. You can't just major in philosophy and expect a job - you need to have a direction, seek internships in college, etc. That direction often changes and evolves until one settles into a career that uses those philosophy degree skills but isn't perhaps what you picture when you think about jobs for philosophers.

Many have pointed out the flaws in #5 for STEM / Engineering, but for someone deciding what they want to do within a set of options in the same range, it often is very true. See a communications major's plentiful varying career paths and possible compatible social science degrees that can be switched to easily.

#6 is usually not true, but I think there's a larger point to take away, which is that you don't need 5 classes in Y and 10 classes in Z to do job X. Often mixing subjects with your interests and having that classic liberal arts balance can be very useful. Psychology can be helpful in getting along with coworkers in any office. Philosophy and ethics could certainly lead to better corporate ethical action if it was widespread enough. I would revise #6 to be "don't box your eduction in by your major". That isn't to say you need to study a full liberal arts curriculum or create your own major either, but simply to develop other relevant skills or interests you have that can aid your life and major.

Obviously, this is a charitable reading, but I think there is some good value hidden here.

> #4 is absolutely true. You can make a good living with any degree, but you should always keep the practicality in mind no matter what major you are. You can't just major in philosophy and expect a job - you need to have a direction, seek internships in college, etc. That direction often changes and evolves until one settles into a career that uses those philosophy degree skills but isn't perhaps what you picture when you think about jobs for philosophers.

I didn't do any of this stuff and I majored in Japanese and here I am working in computer programming. I don't think it really makes that much of a difference what you major in. Anybody who's completed a college major has acquired excellent tools to learn new skills.

How I picked my major:

During high school everyone one day was assigned to look at professions by going on to the bls.gov website .

I picked Computer Science for two reasons .

1. I feel like I would enjoy the job

2. The job market for CS majors has high growth and low unemployment

3. Median pay was above average .

>I picked Computer Science for two reasons .

Clearly you weren't cut out for math :)

He's a programmer, he just has problems with off-by-one errors

reasons[2] returns "Median pay was above average". I see no issue here.

The original comment is 1-indexed, though.

Only on the view

Did you actually like it prior to choosing it?

Yes

On myth 1 ("STEM always delivers"), I think the variation mostly reflects people going into research & teaching vs working in the private sector. But no one is forced into research (quite the opposite). I actually do think that the downside for STEM is limited if earnings is something that matters to you.

[edit] Also the other thing to consider is that humanities is a bit of a one way trip whereas STEM is not. I have seen numerous people with engineering background getting into political science, history, even opera singing! I hardly ever met someone who studied humanities becoming an engineer.

> I have seen numerous people with engineering background getting into political science, history, even opera singing! I hardly ever met someone who studied humanities becoming an engineer.

Hi, now you have. I did a double major in political science and econ, currently a machine learning engineer. Humanities is not at all a one-way ticket unless you expect it to lead directly to a job. Humanities education is for you, not for your employer.

> I have seen numerous people with engineering background getting into political science, history, even opera singing! I hardly ever met someone who studied humanities becoming an engineer.

Anecdotally, my experience is the opposite.

Myth 5 and 6 are not myths at all. You need a strong preparation for most STEM majors and at least at Berkeley, for engineering you need to apply to the COE and for a specific major. L+S is different.

Yep, engineering was a different college within my university and that's common in many public schools. It was not easy to switch in, they only allocated a few spots a year for it.

Tell me about it. I was the victim of some of this bad find yourself advice. I had a 3.8 when I petitioned to transfer into EECS from L+S. I got in but the following semester EECS was heavily impacted and they turned away 4.0s.

The liberal arts are awesome. I took a ton of their classes. You really can find yourself there. Engineering is not awesome. You cannot find yourself there. You can only suffer which was I will admit, gloriously awesome. But I had nightmares for years afterward that I hadn't finished this rec or that rec. EECS sent me to the hospital my senior year. It's a tough route but I'm tougher for it.

I had a recurring nightmare in which I registered for a class at the beginning of the semester (generally a summer semester) and I somehow forgot about it the very end of the semester. I've know others to also have this exact same nightmare.

> Interpretive dance may not be in demand, but the competencies that liberal arts majors emphasize — writing, synthesis, problem solving — are sought after by employers

This sort of analysis always seems a bit silly. So sought after that they struggle to get hired?

If you reduce what's being learned to an extremely generic term like "problem solving", it stops being meaningful. Every major should be learning "problem solving", so of course any employer is going to check the box on your skills survey to mark it as a desired skill.

I wish, I wish, I wish someone would have had this talk with me pre-college: "Why are you going to college? To learn a skill that you can use to pay the bills with, i.e., to make money, right? If the goal is to make money, then wouldn't it be a good idea to try a major where they literally teach you to make money? Which college does that? Does engineering, science, or liberal arts teach you how to make money? Or do they just teach you how to spend other people's money? Hint, as an engineer you are someone else's cost. The college of business literally teaches you how to make money, especially in finance, where they teach how to start with a pile of money and make it a larger pile of money. Granted, some grounding in the hard sciences is nice, but minors are good for that. Final recommendation is Finance major with Computer science minor, and then get an MBA after that as quickly as you can.”

I have bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and in computer science, a law degree (years later in night school), and an MBA (years later again in night school). I do not like that the only advice on picking a major was “do what you enjoy/love”. I loved each of my majors when getting them and when applying them, but I did not enjoy learning the hard way that I want to be the guy paying others to make money for me, instead of the guy getting paid to make money for someone else.

> The college of business literally teaches you how to make money, especially in finance, where they teach how to start with a pile of money and make it a larger pile of money.

They most definitely do not. In fact one of the central teachings in finance is that it's very hard to do that (many caveats of course).

I also did EE and went to business school, and then I went into finance (the career). The skills are not terribly different. In fact quite often I realise that some item I'm reading about was shown to me in my EE days.

I would have advised you to consider more carefully what you are optimizing for and why.

Financial services have a role in a society where we measure value using money - at a minimum we at least need to maintain systems to do all of the accounting.

However, as the amount of energy / labor that we spend as a group focusing on one set of problems increases, we are left with a decreasing amount to solve all of the rest of the society’s problems.

If everyone is a banker, who will grow our food and build our houses?

I strongly disagree with your premise that all majors outside of finance “just teach you how to spend money”. Every area of study provides you with knowledge that you can use to solve real problems that we collectively face.

“Do what you love” is idealistic advice that does not take into consideration the realities of a system which makes it extremely difficult to survive let alone thrive without money, but money should be a means, not an end.

> “Do what you love” is idealistic advice that does not take into consideration the realities of a system which makes it extremely difficult to survive let alone thrive without money, but money should be a means, not an end.

I don't disagree, but there is no time when it's closer to practicable than when you're in college.

Business degrees aren't the kind of slam dunk you're thinking.

I think choosing a major is important if you're the kind of person who thrives on having that sort of structure. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you know you're that type of person, it's probably paramount to choose a major that you like and do it early on so it'll set you on the right path for your career.

Those numbers seem low. 90th percentile for computer science shows under 5 million which if we assume a 40 year career and even pay throughout one's career (to make it easy), they would make under $125,000 a year.

Fresh new grads at big companies make more than that and they employ a lot of people.

> Fresh new grads at big companies make more than that and they employ a lot of people.

"A lot" <> {everyone,the majority,a plurality,a statistically significant number}

$125/yr average for programmers across the US sounds just about right. I live in a low COL area where new grads are lucky to hit $55k/yr. I make less than $125k as a team lead with direct reports and budgetary responsibilities, and my boss' boss (the director of our profit center) is somewhere in the $150-165k range. Sounds bad compared to $400k total comp at Netflix, but my mortgage is $900/mo, I have a yard, and I pay next to nothing (comparatively) in taxes.

I would expect more than 10% and its not just the valley that is paying that. Most other major cities are hitting that (although usually not quite as much as the valley).

I would not expect groupon which is in chicago to be in the top 10% of salary and they are paying average over that (also, glassdoor salaries are usually low from what I have seen): https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Groupon-Software-Engineer-S...

Honestly, I think places like this skew your idea of what's "normal" income for an engineer. I got on Stack Overflow and tried their salary calculator and I was pretty surprised at how low the values were.

I assume you aren't taking into account location.

yeah, because the article didn't either

Work hard and strive towards excellence in your chosen field, and you'll succeed long term. Huh, imagine that.

Nursing? I don't understand.

This list of myths is composed of non-myths.

These articles always read like someone attacking a strawman.

No college degree will make you rich. What a college degree offers is a change in how competitive you are for higher paying jobs.

No one really gets wealthy working in STEM careers, but technical ability is one of the most direct routes to having at least a middle class life.

The choice of school matters, the choice of major matters, but not in predictable ways and it's important to weigh the costs and benefits together. Yeah, private schools have better alumni networks, but do you want to spend 4x on your undergrad to access those? To what extent can you substitute hard work for buying access?

When I was in high school, I seriously considered becoming a doctor. However, I ran the numbers - becoming a doctor vs. going into business and working as hard as I'd have to work to become a doctor. Becoming a doctor probably pays off, but not until you're in your 40s. However, you can put away a lot more money in your 20s and 30s working rather than studying medicine so the break even point is very sensitive to the ROI. But the point is the same choose your own adventure, but at least weigh the options.

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