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I've seen studies like that before, but I've never seen it broken down at all. I'm not surprised by someone with a bachelor's in psychology never working in psy

by delecti 11y ago

I've seen studies like that before, but I've never seen it broken down at all. I'm not surprised by someone with a bachelor's in psychology never working in psychology, same for English, but I would bet that a much higher percent of teaching majors actually go on to be teachers. I'd be willing to bet that most majors aren't clustered around a figure of 32% never working in a field related to their major. It's almost certainly a wide spread. That means it's less useful as general advice, and more an indicator that some majors prepare you for a specific career, and some majors are just used as a generic signal that you graduated college.

bko 11y ago
Yeah, it's not a study, it's a survey by CareerBuilder. My personal (anecdotal) experience would suggest that many people don't use their degree directly for their current profession. Examples of jobs for which there doesn't really exist a college major include most service jobs (sales, waiter, etc) and secretarial work. True that many working in those fields don't have a college degree, but since these are some of the most common jobs in America, a large percentage of workers in the field do have some kind of higher education. Also, let's not forget about the immigrants who's previous educational achievements aren't recognized in America (the PhD driving a cab in NY). Depending on the state, working as a teacher requires an advance degree in education. So some people go to college to study English or science and then return to graduate school for an advanced degree in education.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  The third problem is that college has become widely regarded as job-training by industry. Broadly, it means non-STEM/medicine/biz students end up underemployed in the service sector, but even narrowly within CS you get the perennial debate about students wanting their college programs to teach them software engineering, instead of fundamental theory.
- alistairSH 11y ago
  How would one even measure how directly a degree is being used? Outside of pure professional degrees (medicine, law), is it just a gut feel? My degree is Economics. I'm a project manager at a large software company. Am I using my degree? Probably not directly, but I certainly use the critical thinking skills obtained during my years in school. A bit of the math comes in handy as well. The two largest programs at my university were English and Psychology. I guarantee very few of those graduates pursued careers in either field. But, a good psychology degree takes a fair bit of statistics with a dose of scientific method. And the English degree took critical reading and analysis.
pkaye 11y ago
Just as an example, from my (top tier) college engineering class, of 5 friends and I, only 2 individuals are still practicing their original major. Some went into business, law, finance and the remaining a different engineering major. I think it is very common for people to different things than their original major.

by delecti 11y ago

bko 11y ago

Yeah, it's not a study, it's a survey by CareerBuilder. My personal (anecdotal) experience would suggest that many people don't use their degree directly for their current profession. Examples of jobs for which there doesn't really exist a college major include most service jobs (sales, waiter, etc) and secretarial work. True that many working in those fields don't have a college degree, but since these are some of the most common jobs in America, a large percentage of workers in the field do have some kind of higher education. Also, let's not forget about the immigrants who's previous educational achievements aren't recognized in America (the PhD driving a cab in NY). Depending on the state, working as a teacher requires an advance degree in education. So some people go to college to study English or science and then return to graduate school for an advanced degree in education.

Apocryphon 11y ago
The third problem is that college has become widely regarded as job-training by industry. Broadly, it means non-STEM/medicine/biz students end up underemployed in the service sector, but even narrowly within CS you get the perennial debate about students wanting their college programs to teach them software engineering, instead of fundamental theory.
alistairSH 11y ago
How would one even measure how directly a degree is being used? Outside of pure professional degrees (medicine, law), is it just a gut feel? My degree is Economics. I'm a project manager at a large software company. Am I using my degree? Probably not directly, but I certainly use the critical thinking skills obtained during my years in school. A bit of the math comes in handy as well. The two largest programs at my university were English and Psychology. I guarantee very few of those graduates pursued careers in either field. But, a good psychology degree takes a fair bit of statistics with a dose of scientific method. And the English degree took critical reading and analysis.

pkaye 11y ago

Just as an example, from my (top tier) college engineering class, of 5 friends and I, only 2 individuals are still practicing their original major. Some went into business, law, finance and the remaining a different engineering major. I think it is very common for people to different things than their original major.