15 ms·

Truthfully, depending on your definition of majority, most college students ARE already pursuing more profitable majors. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d1

by hfourm 9y ago

Truthfully, depending on your definition of majority, most college students ARE already pursuing more profitable majors. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_322.10.asp?current=yes https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_322.10.a... The "underwater basketweaving" so to say, may be at most 10-15% of current college graduates. I think the solution lies more with reducing the cost of college, open source textbooks, more elearning, etc. Regardless of government funding vs subsidized loans, the cat is already out of the hat on a lot of price increases around campuses nation wide. It isn't going to be just as easy to just change the funding source. I also sympathize with the trade school argument, but I don't think everyone going to college is a bad idea by any means.

jedberg 9y ago
You could do all those cost reduction things, but until you either decrease demand or decrease the supply of money, costs will never go down -- profits will just go up.
- hfourm 9y ago
  That is overly generic and not necessarily true.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Unless the public were given the means to more directly assert control over its public universities.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
Psychology is effectively today's basket weaving. There is an excess number of students receiving those degrees with no intent to work in the field. It's widely perceived as an "easy" degree which makes it worthless unless you continue on and make it into the limited space for a graduate program.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Psychology is a superb background for both marketing and design. Possibly better than a marketing or design undergrad. It’s also a great lead-in to an MBA. Heck, I think it’s put you in good stead to get finance jobs. Have you studied psych before? I got a minor with my CS undergrad and all my psych classes were invaluable.
  - pkaye 9y ago
    I'm sure psychology might work great as a double major like you mention but as a pure major it is probably not beneficial to most in the job market.
- asddkk 9y ago
  So... I got an undergrad degree in psychology, but then went on to a doctoral program and got a PhD. I'm not actually disputing your suggestion that a lot of students obtain the degree as a placeholder--it's a problem--but depending on the university, it's far from easy, and I know lots of students who obtain lots of degrees as placeholders. Students perceive that the degree is easy based on introductory psychology, but in a lot of programs, it quickly turns into statistics, neuroscience, and cognitive modeling with upper-level classes. Students coast for their first year or two and then sometime by their 3rd year start struggling. Anyway, one of my frustrations after my doctoral degree is the stereotypes about the field. I've certainly had more experience with computer science, math, and statistics than most undergrads with those degrees (math might be different). I've worked with comp sci undergrads, and without meaning anything negative, I felt like I was teaching them about programming most of the time, rather than anything the other way around. And yet, because of my degree, somehow people just assume that I'm interested in past lives therapy or something like that. What I do is closer to ML/AI/epidemiology than anything else. I've published papers in the areas of information theory and statistics, and coded in a large number of languages across various paradigms. One shift that seems to have occurred since I was in undergrad is this idea that you are your degree. It's pernicious. The liberal arts philosophy is sort of along the lines of "get a degree in philosophy," take your advanced maths and statistics, and then learn more of it later, because the specific degree doesn't matter. But now we see college as an advanced job training program, and people assume that you are only qualified to do what you got your undergrad in. It's absurd. I admit there's some limits--I'd wonder if an BFA could get deep experience in computer science, but who knows? I've seen all sorts of art projects that involve heavy coding, statistics / ML, and low-level hardware stuff, and know history faculty who are basically doing signal processing research. Coetzee, a nobel prize winner in literature, used to code. At some level, the problem isn't these degrees all the time, it's the stereotypes about them and the people getting them.
throwawayjava 9y ago
> The "underwater basketweaving" so to say, may be at most 10-15% of current college graduates. What percentage of mortgages went into foreclosure in 2008? One source I found said 1/54.

by hfourm 9y ago

jedberg 9y ago

You could do all those cost reduction things, but until you either decrease demand or decrease the supply of money, costs will never go down -- profits will just go up.

hfourm 9y ago
That is overly generic and not necessarily true.
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Unless the public were given the means to more directly assert control over its public universities.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

Psychology is effectively today's basket weaving. There is an excess number of students receiving those degrees with no intent to work in the field. It's widely perceived as an "easy" degree which makes it worthless unless you continue on and make it into the limited space for a graduate program.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
Psychology is a superb background for both marketing and design. Possibly better than a marketing or design undergrad. It’s also a great lead-in to an MBA. Heck, I think it’s put you in good stead to get finance jobs. Have you studied psych before? I got a minor with my CS undergrad and all my psych classes were invaluable.
- pkaye 9y ago
  I'm sure psychology might work great as a double major like you mention but as a pure major it is probably not beneficial to most in the job market.
asddkk 9y ago
So... I got an undergrad degree in psychology, but then went on to a doctoral program and got a PhD. I'm not actually disputing your suggestion that a lot of students obtain the degree as a placeholder--it's a problem--but depending on the university, it's far from easy, and I know lots of students who obtain lots of degrees as placeholders. Students perceive that the degree is easy based on introductory psychology, but in a lot of programs, it quickly turns into statistics, neuroscience, and cognitive modeling with upper-level classes. Students coast for their first year or two and then sometime by their 3rd year start struggling. Anyway, one of my frustrations after my doctoral degree is the stereotypes about the field. I've certainly had more experience with computer science, math, and statistics than most undergrads with those degrees (math might be different). I've worked with comp sci undergrads, and without meaning anything negative, I felt like I was teaching them about programming most of the time, rather than anything the other way around. And yet, because of my degree, somehow people just assume that I'm interested in past lives therapy or something like that. What I do is closer to ML/AI/epidemiology than anything else. I've published papers in the areas of information theory and statistics, and coded in a large number of languages across various paradigms. One shift that seems to have occurred since I was in undergrad is this idea that you are your degree. It's pernicious. The liberal arts philosophy is sort of along the lines of "get a degree in philosophy," take your advanced maths and statistics, and then learn more of it later, because the specific degree doesn't matter. But now we see college as an advanced job training program, and people assume that you are only qualified to do what you got your undergrad in. It's absurd. I admit there's some limits--I'd wonder if an BFA could get deep experience in computer science, but who knows? I've seen all sorts of art projects that involve heavy coding, statistics / ML, and low-level hardware stuff, and know history faculty who are basically doing signal processing research. Coetzee, a nobel prize winner in literature, used to code. At some level, the problem isn't these degrees all the time, it's the stereotypes about them and the people getting them.

throwawayjava 9y ago

> The "underwater basketweaving" so to say, may be at most 10-15% of current college graduates. What percentage of mortgages went into foreclosure in 2008? One source I found said 1/54.