"...some educators worry that three years isn’t enough time for young people to find themselves intellectually or emotionally."
Almost all degrees in England are three years degrees.
Almost all degrees in England are three years degrees.
{The downvote is a great example of this fascination. Merely asking a question was troublesome enough for someone that instead of responding to the question they clicked the down arrow. My question was polite and genuine, at least that was my intention. What is so threatening/offensive about my question?}
Another of my friends was an English major; planned to go into teaching but found himself in med school a few years later.
It's always a pretty wide variety, but I feel a large number of people end up heading another direction at some point, if not right after college.
(I too was a PSC major and ended up doing my 1L year before wandering elsewhere)
Personal story: I went to high school in France. When it came for me to decide between colleges, I had the choice between a 3 year degree at Cambridge and a 4 year degree at Stanford. The Cambridge program was for "Natural Sciences", Stanford didn't ask me to select a major until 3 years in. I chose Stanford, took a wide variety of classes far outside anything i had been exposed to previously, and ended up with a degree in Economics -- in addition to a BS and an MS in Biology during which I had the opportunity to pursue many courses in CS, statistics, data analysis, etc. It was also fun, so much so that I ended up staying 5 years instead of 4. Today I work in tech. Had I chosen Cambridge my perspective (and my life!) would be very different.
If you meet someone styled MEng, MMath, MSci or MChem, that's generally what they've got. Note they generally do not have e.g. BEng MEng or BSc MEng: the fourth year has an extended project/thesis element but is not a separate degree.
It's all very nice to have a masters as your first degree, but you can't really escape the fact that university expansion and the eroding standards of A-levels, together with the technological demands of the modern world, mean it's very hard for three years of higher education in the sciences to be enough.
Also, I wouldn't say that most undergrads in STEM do 4 year masters degrees in the UK. I think a fair few do, but going on what I've seen from friends, and what I saw when I was applying for my CS degree 4 years ago, which I'm coming to the end of now, it can often be difficult to find places that do the 4 year masters. For CS, there were probably fewer than 10 places in the country that did MEng. This is just my experience though, it might be changing, and I'm a few years out of date.
Engineering is one exception, generally being four years. But often that includes honours built-in (if you get a good enough GPA), whereas with most other degrees you have to do an extra year after finishing the bachelors degree to get that.