NYT：Six Myths About Choosing a College Major

05-10

By: JEFFREY J. SELINGONOV. 3, 2017

Many colleges ask you to choose a major as early as your senior

year of high school, on your admissions application. Yet there』s a good chance

you』ll change your mind. The Education Department says that about 30 percent of

students switch majors at least once.

Students get plenty of advice about picking a major. It turns out,

though, that most of it is from family and friends, according to a September

Gallup survey. Only 11 percent had sought guidance from a high school counselor,

and 28 percent from a college adviser. And most didn』t think that the advice was

especially helpful. Maybe it』s because much of the conventional thinking about

majors is wrong.

Myth 1: For the big money, STEM always delivers.

It』s true that computer science and engineering top all the pay

rankings, but salaries within specific majors vary greatly.

「Students and parents have a pretty good idea of what majors pay

the most, but they have a poor sense of the magnitude of the differences within

the major,」 said Douglas A. Webber, an associate professor of economics at

Temple University who studies earnings by academic field. He points to one

example: The top quarter of earners who majored in English make more over their

lifetimes than the bottom quarter of chemical engineers.

But what if you never make it to the top of the pay scale? Even

English or history graduates who make just above the median lifetime earnings

for their major do pretty well when compared to typical graduates in business or

a STEM field.

Take the median lifetime earnings of business majors, the most

popular undergraduate degree. The typical graduate earns $2.86 million over a

lifetime. When you put business graduates side by side with those who graduated

with what are considered low-paying majors, you』ll see that those who are

slightly above the median salary in their fields are not that far behind the

business grads. For example, an English major in the 60th percentile makes $2.76

million in a lifetime, a major in psychology $2.57 million and a history major

$2.64 million.

Myth 2: Women want to have it all.

Women are now the clear majority on college campuses, making up 56

percent of students enrolled this fall. They are also more likely than men to

graduate.

But when it comes to selecting a major, what women choose tends to

segregate them into lower paying fields, such as education and social services,

according to a report that Georgetown University』s Center on Education and the

Workforce will publish later this year. Just look at some of the highest paying

fields and the proportion of women who major in them: business economics (31

percent), chemical engineering (28 percent), computer science (20 percent),

electrical engineering (10 percent), mechanical engineering (8 percent).

「Women can』t win even as they dominate at every level of higher

education,」 said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown center.

Dr. Carnevale wouldn』t speculate as to why women make their

choices. But he notes that if the proportion of women in fields where men

dominate increased by just 10 percent, the gender pay gap would narrow

considerably: from 78 cents paid to women for every dollar men receive to 90

cents for every dollar men receive.

Myth 3: Choice of major matters more than choice of

college.

Not so. In seven states — Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota,

Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington — students can search public databases

for early earnings of graduates of institutions within the state. And those

databases show that students who graduate from more selective schools tend to

make more money. After all, the better the college, the better the professional

network opportunities, through alumni, parents of classmates and eventually

classmates themselves.

These undergraduates are more able to pursue majors in lower

paying fields because their networks help them land good jobs. Arts, humanities

and social science majors are more prevalent on elite campuses than at

second-tier colleges, where students tend to pick vocational majors like

business, education and health. In all, more than half of students at less

selective schools major in career-focused subjects; at elite schools, less than

a quarter do, according to an analysis by the website FiveThirtyEight of the 78

「most selective schools」 in Barron』s rankings, compared with 1,800 「less

selective schools.」

「Students at selective colleges are allowed to explore their

intellectual curiosity as undergraduates because they will get their job

training in graduate school or have access to a network that gets them top jobs,

regardless of their undergraduate major,」 Dr. Carnevale said.

They are also more likely to have two majors than students at

second-tier colleges, who tend to be more financially needy and have to work,

affording less time to double major.

One tip: Complementary majors with overlapping requirements are

easier to juggle, but two unrelated majors probably yield bigger gains in the

job market, said Richard N. Pitt, an associate professor of sociology at

Vanderbilt University who has studied the rise of the double major. 「It

increases your breadth of knowledge,」 he said.

Myth 4: Liberal arts majors are unemployable.

The liberal arts is a favorite target of politicians, with the

latest salvo coming from the governor of Kentucky, Matt Bevin. 「If you』re

studying interpretive dance, God bless you, but there』s not a lot of jobs right

now in America looking for people with that as a skill set,」 Governor Bevin said

in a speech in September.

Interpretive dance may not be in demand, but the competencies that

liberal arts majors emphasize — writing, synthesis, problem solving — are sought

after by employers. A 2017 study by David J. Deming, an associate professor of

education and economics at Harvard, found jobs requiring both the so-called soft

skills and thinking skills have seen the largest growth in employment and pay in

the last three decades.

One knock on the liberal arts is that it』s difficult to find a

first job. But a study by Burning Glass Technologies, a Boston-based company

that analyzes job-market trends, concluded that if liberal arts graduates gain

proficiency in one of eight technical skills, such as social media or data

analysis, their prospects of landing entry-level jobs increase

substantially.

The long-held belief by parents and students that liberal arts

graduates are unemployable ignores the reality of the modern economy, where jobs

require a mix of skills not easily packaged in a college major, said George

Anders, author of 「You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a 『Useless』

Liberal Arts Education.」 In his book, Mr. Anders profiles graduates with degrees

in philosophy, sociology and linguistics in jobs as diverse as sales, finance

and market research.

「Once C.E.O.s see liberal arts graduates in action,」 Mr. Anders

said, 「they come aboard to the idea that they need more of them.」

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

Why settle on a field of study before experiencing the smorgasbord

college has to offer, be it study abroad, a club activity or a surprising

elective?

Of students who said they felt committed to their major when they

arrived on campus, 20 percent had selected a new major by the end of their first

year, according to a national survey by the University of California, Los

Angeles.

Changing majors can cost you a semester or two, especially if you

switch to one unrelated to your first choice. To reduce that risk, several

schools, including Arizona State University, Georgia State University and Lehman

College in the Bronx, have created 「meta-majors,」 which group majors under a

larger academic umbrella.

「We have moved away from trying to get students to choose their

majors as they enter,」 said Timothy Renick, Georgia State』s vice provost and

vice president for enrollment management and student success.

Instead, all incoming students choose from one of seven

meta-majors, representing large academic and work force fields, such as

business, education and STEM. First semester, students gather in learning

communities and register for a block of general-education courses within that

meta-major. Programming is designed so that students get to know the differences

between majors within the field.

「Students in our business meta-major get to understand the

difference between finance, accounting, management and marketing so they can

choose their major from an informed perspective,」 Dr. Renick said. They usually

do by the end of their first year.

Myth 6: You need a major.

A handful of colleges, including Indiana University and the

Evergreen State College, offer the option to ignore the official list of majors

and design a course of study. Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor for The

Times, designed his at Indiana — enigmatology.

「Majors are artificial and restrictive,」 said Christine Ortiz, a

dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on leave to design a new

nonprofit university that will have no majors, and also no lectures or

classrooms.

「Majors result from the academic structure of the university, tied

to the classic academic disciplines. There is no reason they need to be boxed up

like that. They don』t take into account emerging fields that cross

disciplines.」

Majors tend to lag behind changes in the workplace. No wonder

fewer than a third of college graduates work in jobs related to their majors.

And picking one based on today』s in-demand jobs is risky, said Dr. Webber of

Temple, especially if the occupation is threatened by automation.

「I would argue against majoring in accounting,」 he said, 「or

anything that a computer can be programmed to do.」

Jeffrey J. Selingo is the author of 「There Is Life After

College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to
Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow.」

A version of this article appears in print on November 5, 2017, on

Page ED8 of Education Life with the headline: Six Myths About Choosing Your

College Major.

以上內容摘自：

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/choosing-a-college-major.html