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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 th

by 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.

by bko 11y ago

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.