I've got a few friends who work in science, and it seems to be a pretty poorly paying field, with a real lack of job prospects, unless you secure a job at a government research department.
I ended up getting a microbiology degree and an EE, went to medical school (MD PhD) but dropped out. I was able to get a great job doing programming, so Im relatively sure they were right.
With my kids Im using the same approach.
With regards to grad school, my parents' philosophy was if you could not get grad school funded by an RA or TA, then you had no business going.
I try to use reliable data sets [0] to help understand because anecdotes are hard for me to make decisions. The data are almost always a few years old so they aren’t perfect and could miss a new trend. But it’s the best I know how to use.
[0] figure 4 shows stem 3rd highest after health and management https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...
More seriously, anecdotes are terrible when giving advice to fresh high school seniors on their way to graduation. When people think of degrees in certain fields, they gravitate to the successful people (“I’ll study acting and make millions like the famous actors I know”, etc). They don’t think of and aren’t even aware of how many people get those degrees and fail hard.
That’s why they need to see the placement and salary stats to understand what their up against. Once they understand a French Comparative Literature degree has approximately no economic value, then they can make that decision knowingly. Papering over that by pointing out the one leader that happens to have that degree does more harm than good.
I think there's a world of difference between "I want to study acting and I'll end up successful like Brad Pitt" and "Hmm, my cousin is in marketing, and seems to have created a great career there, I should talk to them about that."
Anecdotes about people you don't know, and career stories you don't fully understand aren't helpful, but frankly I don't think massive data sets on how much the average graduate earns within two years of graduation (for example) are all that helpful either, except as a broad way to compare yourself. It's such a large number of people, you don't really anything particularly useful at an individual level (even though there are plenty of good uses for data like that).
At the end of the day, people hire you. Not data. After all, who says that a teenager can tell apart badly interpreted data any better than poor anecdotes?
Teenagers should be able to understand data by the time they pick a college or career.
The sciences degrees are only obviously worth it if you then go on to become a doctor, but that's more schooling and the undergrad degree isn't a strict requirement anyway.
Most of my friends with degrees in math, physics, etc., just ended up being software engineers anyway. So the degree "paid off" for them in the same way a CS degree would, but they would've been better served just going CS.
In fact, funding for scientific research was cut by the Obama administration, leading to the closure of all but two of our branches and displacing dozen of workers amidst a recession.
When I transferred to academia, I took on an underpaying role, and found that the same shenanigans were afoot there. Now, we are approaching the end of the 2000s population boom, and in five years, universities will have many fewer prospective applicants for the following decade at least. The ripples of the contraction caused by the gambling of a few spoiled bankers will be felt again in another 20 years with a much smaller and resource-constrained workforce, still reeling from the burdens of loan debt and overpriced housing.
Unless Sanders gets his way, that is.
It's probably best I plan my exit in advance this go-round.