It pays to be a double major in college | Hacker News Reader

It pays to be a double major in college

wsj.com

27 pointslxm51 comments

(article based on this study: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32095)

This is stating that "workers who double majored in college have more stable earnings than workers who majored in a single subject, meaning they’re less susceptible to sharp swings in income." I think the world requires increasing specialization in knowledge and cross-/multi-disciplinary skillsets are required to achieve excellence. But for this particular effect from the article (earning stability) I wonder if it's more related to a selection bias.

I believe people who successfully double-major these days are likely to be more reliable at work. With that increasing specialization, if your niche is experiencing a broad downturn it would seem especially difficult to find another role (though obviously when one does open up, there would be less competition for it). Particularly because:

> “They have a wider funnel, a broader set of opportunities to select from, and this seemed to affect their earnings years later,”

My feelings here differ from that OSU professor's. Personally I feel that after about 5-8 years of experience, it gets increasingly difficult to transition your career out of your original niche. For younger employees it certainly opens up the opportunity to change careers to any ~entry-level role related to either of their degrees, but mid-career and senior roles generally want someone with specific experience, and few entry-level roles will consider mid-career candidates with unrelated experience.

So I do wonder if people who get dual degrees are simply the type of worker who are less likely to get laid off in the first place, regardless of whether they're filling a niche role or something that is garden-variety for one of their degrees.

Double majors are smart, hard workers who can endure more pain than average. (Who willingly signs up for that except for driven individuals?)

It'd be good if we had more proxies for assessing this.

> Who willingly signs up for that except for driven individuals?

Idiots who didn't read the prospectus.

I doubled in CS and EE. In the UK that was called a "joint honours". Not sure many places run them any more, but that was the 80s. What they didn't tell us was that it isn't 50% or one degree and 50% of the other - it's 75% of a comp. sci degree and 75% electronics engineering, taught concurrently by two separate departments. I sometimes had to make a choice between which lecture to take when they were opposite sides of the campus.

I suspect it varies a lot by institution and subjects.

When I did my degree in Comp Sci I completed most of a math degree as well. I bailed on it in the last semester because I decided I wanted to just relax and enjoy my last 6 months there. And my career was always going to be computers, not math.

These days my alma mater requires you double major just to graduate.

What about people who don't double-major because they need to also work a job, or for economic reasons they need to graduate as soon as possible, or minimize the credit hours and fees they pay, or they're doing undergrad research, or they need to focus on GPA, or they care enough about their major to spend any discretionary time on that?

Why give double-majors any preference at all over those other people, who don't sound like slackers?

If people are doing good work, I trust they'll find a way to signal it. That doesn't mean you throw out good signal to equalize the playing field.

Everyone can cut their own path to success. Some make themselves visible with their endeavors. It doesn't have to be a double major.

Point taken about not throwing out what one thinks is good signal.

But I disagree that people will find a way to signal that they're doing good work. I didn't see much at all of that signalling until I was around the fancy-pants universities (and the difference was striking). And even there, the self-promoting level (skill, opportunity, and stomach for it) varied widely.

>It'd be good if we had more proxies for assessing this.

Work experience outside the classroom, basically: part-time employment, athletics, internships, undergraduate research, completed projects, organizational leadership.

Of course, this is mainly for traditional students at four-year institutions where these opportunities are common. It's tougher if you can only take classes part-time.

Or survivorship bias. Perhaps people who manage to graduate while taking heavy course loads are also the type that, as others say, are good at getting work done in general. But the headline is "Why it pays to be a double major in college". This would not be true if graduation with >3.0 GPA becomes difficult, as graduating and getting a decent GPA are probably more strongly correlated with income than having two majors at some point.

> Personally I feel that after about 5-8 years of experience, it gets increasingly difficult to transition your career out of your original niche.

I had a professor who said that a computer scientist must reinvent themself every 7-10 years. Your niche won't exist much longer, so better not get stuck in it.

It can be a matter of attitude. Why choose between being a generalist and a specialist when you can be both? Become a recognized expert in something, but at the same time keep widening your expertise and learning whatever you need. Then if a career path dries out, you are ready to jump to a mid-level or even senior position somewhere else.

I graduated in CS and in economics. I don't see much of a difference in work performance compared to my co-workers. I think it's because positions nowadays are very much created for predefined combinations of personality and education and I'm an outlier.

I think the main benefit of studying two fields is intellectual satisfaction. It's a source of happiness for live because I understand more about the world on a deeper level than many others (at least I believe that).

Well, besides specialization - you do have 2x the jobs to choose from. And if one job area becomes weaker or goes away, the other can be your direction out without retraining.

One of my points is that you only have 2x jobs to choose from during a certain window after you graduate. If the well you choose dries up after 8 years, many companies will no longer consider you for those same other roles that you once turned down.

I have experience in a number of disparate industries. But I can’t get jobs in fields I have years of experience in, because my resume doesn't have anything relevant to them in the past 5-10 years.

I went to school for Chemical Engineering and worked in chemical plants as an operational/improvement/projects plant engineer, working closely with plant operators, technicians, and construction crews, intimate knowledge of the “dirty stuff” - steels, pumps, motors, boilers, flares, reactors, tanks, etc. But the only jobs I’d be able to get at chemical companies today would be ones where the intersection of my chemical engineering training and more recent software engineering experience is specifically valued (desk work). I wouldn’t be able to land a plant engineer role at a chemical plant, even though I know it very well - no one will hire me to work with the tradesmen anymore.

At some point, the old wells you didn’t keep drinking from just dry up.

I think this is probably a proxy for some linear combination of IQ and industriousness.

Yep!

The paper also mentions a wider funnel of opportunities. I can see that in myself and my adult child. There is a kind of “generalist penalty” in terms of landing certain kinds of specialist positions, but there is a class of troubleshooter jobs and system integration jobs that a generalist is simply much more effective at doing because of the broader perspective.

Or family wealth and ambition.

> Xuechao Qian, a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and one of the paper’s co-authors, cautions that the paper is not a straight cost-benefit analysis that accounts for the additional time and cost of pursuing a double major.

Right, but how much does IQ confound with family wealth? These things can be difficult to study because of confounders.

Or planning for grad-school; I know a few Double Major attorneys that did their undergrad in whatever-they-felt-like since law school was their real destination.

Reminds me of a guy I know who was not particularly the brightest. He wanted to be a lawyer and received a degree in Mass Communications, because he was told it was an easy major, then followed that up with a very low LSAT score. He's spent the better part of the last 3 decades verifying the contents of container vessels in a railyard.

How so? All you need is money, and maybe a bit more time.

At least in the American college setting, most people who double major pursue a much higher number of simultaneous courses (also described as 'how many credits you are taking this semester').

This means less time for fun and socializing and more time in class and studying.

Industriousness is displayed by the willingness to work harder than is expected of someone with a single major which is the dominant way to do undergrad. IQ would be involved in the ability to study for and take more exams in finals week(s).

You cannot exclude wealth, both family and neighborhood, as a proxy.

I did not come from a rich family but we were in the district for the public school which included a lot of professional class parents.

The school offered a lot of AP courses. If you do well on the AP test then some colleges would accept that as college credit. This would make it easier to get a double major.

However, not everyone could afford the AP tests, and schools from poorer neighborhoods, or from smaller districts, didn't offer as many AP courses.

Agreed, and on top of industriousness is mental flexibility. Being more open to strike out and learn something new to improve their job opportunities (as a double major is just that, learning more than just one subject).

To me, this reads as further justification for higher-ed as a gatekeeper to employment. First, you needed a college degree. If you didn’t have one, it’s your fault you can’t advance. Plus, the huge debt that comes with student loans is a natural byproduct, so don’t complain if you’re in that group and still can’t get ahead.

People are waking up to the fact that higher-ed, coupled with crushing debt, is quite often a losing scenario. So here’s a new way of framing the problem: you didn’t get a double-major (thus incurring even more debt) so it’s still your fault.

To me, this reeks of propping up a failing system rather than admitting that tuitions are out of control and today’s youth have very little hope of building a prosperous life. That it’s in the WSJ only furthers my belief that this is the real justification for the article.

Having gone through this myself, the main skills I learned were how to navigate bureaucracy and manipulate people more powerful than me to do what I want them to do and work way too many hours while ignoring my own mental and physical health.

Both of those things are correlated with high income earners, but that doesn’t make them virtues.

It pays to be a hard worker… thanks for the tip.

Huh I guess that helped me out since my CS Engineering Degree made us all practically Math double majors if you chose the right classes. People petitioned it to do it.

I also took a lot of philosophy classes so that might have helped me too

Note that the second major is often not a different engineering field.

I'm a college faculty member. I'll just note one thing in my experience. Everything in life involves tradeoffs and this is not an exception. I have often seen people unable to take something they were interested in because a second major means a lot of juggling. If they are okay with that, then that's fine of course.

Wrong. It pays to be a good student, and most double majors are good students. You should not prescribe double majoring to improve income any more than you should prescribe "just any old degree is better than none" to improve income. It amazes me that the people who write articles like this finished college.

Choosing a path based on the assumption alone that you will land on the average or median is a dangerous game to play.

Seem even more dangerous to assume you're an outlier.

I feel like being a good software engineer is itself like being a double major. You need to know code, but you also need to know the domain you're going for. And I saw this as a double major (history & biology) now running a small software company.

How many double-majors have AP or other high-school credit completing their gen-eds before they even walk in the door?

Now we can scam the next generation into even more debt and getting into the workforce at a later age by convincing them to get 2 degrees

Correlation =\= Causation

I'm guessing correlation, not causation

Now, I'm all for not having to deal with their annoying paywall tactics bullcrap, but I'm wondering, is using archive.org as a way to get around paywalls like WSJ's an abuse? I'm concerned less for their profit and more for the fact that we might get archive.org hit with cease-and-desist's or cause archive.org to have to foot larger bandwidth costs when they're a really good service that's important for the long-term of the internet. I see a lot of people do it, though, so wasn't sure if there's some sort of blind-eye going on.

It's really not. WSJ (and others) abuse paywalls by using Google-specific schema to have their paywalled articles show up in Search and Google News. That's my opinion of it. I do share your concern, but I think it ultimately ends up being beneficial for everyone. In the case of HN, the site can propel stories into the stratosphere, and that puts a lot of eyes on the paywalled site.

As for blind-eye, the other option would be to disallow paywalled stories entirely.

From the official Hacker News FAQ,

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls.

Definitely a tragedy of the commons situation.

I've used a number of tricks to circumvent paywalls over the years, and they all get shut down after a year or two.

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418482.)

> is using archive.org as a way to get around paywalls like WSJ's an abuse

HN either shouldn't allow any sort of paywall bypass (other than gifted sharable links) or should ban submissions from sites that have a paywall, IMO.

I don't think YC could say with a straight face that they'd be OK w/ one of their portfolio company's content being taken from behind a paywall and shared elsewhere to a very large audience. Actually I do think they could (and would) say that, but I wouldn't believe them.

Archive.is (Archive.today, etc.) is not Archive.org. They already do get a lot of attacks from copyright holders and are unavailable in some jurisdictions.

I don't know if the original link was to the Internet Archive.

Ah yes. I look forward to seeing “double major” in the nice to haves list in job descriptions /s

This is increasingly likely, even just considering entirely valid reasons for it. As the world gets increasingly specialized, value is often found at the intersection of multiple disciplines/niches. Low-hanging fruit is still there, but getting harder to find and increasingly competitive. Multi-disciplinary endeavors generally are finding more success these days, and to be successful they need to have some team members who know both/all pieces thoroughly.

There is no valid reason to list "double major" as a job requirement. It's way too specific, and doing so would encourage people to potentially waste time getting a double major they don't benefit from just to check off a box. I double-majored and I find the idea silly and counterproductive. You should only double major if you want to do something involving both majors together or else you want options to do either one separately. It's not worth it to most people because very few people get to straddle two separate fields in their job. You'd be better off getting an extra year or more of income.

You don’t think there’s any job role which would benefit from someone who double-majored? Personally I think it’s axiomatic that these roles both exist and are increasing in frequency because of natural evolution in the business/global landscape. But I’d be super happy to hear and consider arguments which might disprove my belief.

Math and Biology, or Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, or Linguistics and Computer Science? I can definitely imagine roles where these combos would be highly valued and difficult to replicate the same value with two people. NOTE: I do think that if someone can demonstrate mastery and experience in both relevant disciplines that should “count” in lieu of a double major…but I believe that about any degree requirements.

We now have so many multi-disciplinary majors like “Mechatronics”, “Computational Biology”, “Bioprocess Engineering” specifically because of this value. So sure, you could “just” get one of those majors instead of the two they combine, but it seems folly to think that all practical combinations already have a unified major at the schools that a particular student might want to study at. It’s reasonable to assume that they might get accepted to schools where the best option for something like this is double-majoring - even if they get accepted to a school with a Mechatronics Program, it might not be as high quality of an education there as another school which doesn’t have that where they could double major in Electrical Engineer and Mechanical Engineering.

>You don’t think there’s any job role which would benefit from someone who double-majored?

Of course I do, that's why I did it myself. I just think the number of these roles is far smaller than the number of double majors who get them, or much less the double majors who use both of the majors they got. It is irresponsible to dangle the strategy of a double major out as a hot tip to get better income, because it's a fairly big investment with low payoff. People even question the value of MS degrees in this field. How much more do they question the value of double majors?

Again the same type of reasoning was used to justify everyone getting a college degree regardless of subject. It's wrong to advertise it as a financial strategy. You should have a specific purpose and reasonable risk assessment before investing in any kind of academic program. The cost of it is tuition plus one or more years of lost salary. The payoff may never come. So you should truly care about what you're studying and be good at it, and not just collect majors like bottlecaps hoping to cash in someday.

People who do want a more specialized job should beware, as the market for those jobs is smaller and often more difficult than for less specialized stuff. So many people try to specialize then get screwed on pay because they set all their hopes on doing that one special job. There are a few who manage to spin it into higher or more stable income, but I think that's more rare.

I super agree entirely with all of this.

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