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There really needs to be dis/incentives for choosing one’s major. I majored in Neuroscience and looking back it was a colossal waste of time and money. I don’t

There really needs to be dis/incentives for choosing one’s major. I majored in Neuroscience and looking back it was a colossal waste of time and money. I don’t remember most of it, and it was all just acquiring an existing knowledge base which I could have done by independently studying a few textbooks. Meanwhile I still remember the basics of calculus from AP calculus in high school and it has become useful to me. I strongly regret not majoring in something skill-based like math or engineering because those are things that are much harder to teach yourself without mentorship, they tend to stick with you longer, and they make up the foundation skills for so many other areas. But I had no disincentive for choosing neuroscience. I was attracted to the subject and so thought it was reasonable to major in it, not taking into consideration its long term value. If a neuroscience degree came with a black box warning or student loans weren’t so easy to get with that degree or if there was a social stigma to choosing useless degrees then maybe I would have been nudged toward math or computer science. Anyone can study neuroscience in their spare time but it becomes increasingly difficult to spare the time to learn something like quantum field theory in your own time outside of college. Already having a strong math background would make self-teaching complex mathematical subjects like that do-able. Whole swaths of human intellectual achievement are effectively out of reach to me due to my limited math skills.

0xcafecafe 7y ago
I agree with what you are saying but it is still not out of time for you. You can start building up your math repertoire by starting simple in something like Khan academy and working your way up. You can eventually also try free courses which universities offer online. Most of the math I know is not due to have amazing mentorship but being forced to do the exercises day in day out.
sunshinelackof 7y ago
Calling a degree useless because its value is not realized by the market today is myopic. If there were an explicit disincentive to study neuroscience, it's very unlikely that you would have textbooks summarizing decades of work in neuroscience. This sort of thing basically existed in 1800's with surgeons. They weren't valued for their work and had a social stigma placed upon them. It took surgery a century to dig out of that hole, only thanks to the people who were dedicated enough to it.
- JudgeWapner 7y ago
  why can't you do anything with a neuroscience degree? Because of a variant of reglatory capture that prohibits you from doing much more than emptying bedpans with the degree. I know there has to be some regulation in medicine, but it's often abused to the point that a Bachelor's degree only gets you to the most basic, monkey-can-do-it jobs.
- outlace 7y ago
  I disagree strongly. Neuroscience as it is taught at the undergraduate level is just a body of knowledge you are tasked with memorizing. I can’t think of any job that just requires you to spit out answers to multiple choice questions about neuroscience or anything else for that matter. Surgery, however, is a skill that is honed by repetition. You can’t learn surgery from a book. This is the point I’m making. Skills matter and it may be worth it to pursue a skill-based degree but knowledge is cheap. Why spend $30k/yr getting a degree in neuroscience when you could buy the same textbooks, memorize the same information and yet only spend a few hundred dollars on the books themselves? I’m not saying neuroscience knowledge isn’t valuable, I’m saying it doesn’t make sense to go get a 4 year degree out of it. The most valuable things I gained out of my college experience were extracurriculars working in a research lab (gained practical research skills), leadership skills from starting and running student organizations, and work skills from a part time job. And there certainly still would be textbooks even if there were no undergraduate neuroscience major. You could still pursue a graduate degree where you take some classes but then spend most of your time building skills and working toward a real contribution to the field.
- chrshawkes 7y ago
  You make a good point. The US Army treated contract surgeons terribly in the 19th century. Look at the case of Dr. Porter from Custer's Last Stand, he didn't even get an award for his bravery.
- tathougies 7y ago
  > It took surgery a century to dig out of that hole, only thanks to the people who were dedicated enough to it. Surgery wasn't valued because it was mostly a quack science at the time.
6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
That's BS. I graduated about a decade ago and had a similar realization and self-studied my way through a whole bunch of my missing foundations. I've worked my way through at least a dozen multi-course textbooks and who knows how many papers over the last decade and have really filled in the gaps in my knowledge. It's paid off quite well for me. Saying it's out of reach is ridiculous, since you're talking about years of effort. Be patient and just do it.
- outlace 7y ago
  Yes I know it's not literally impossible for me to self-study quantum field theory (or insert other math-heavy discipline) and I have been self-studying math and have made significant progress over the last few years. But I went through medical school and have 2 kids now, so there just isn't time in the day to put in the hours to get to where I want to be in a reasonable amount of time. I don't work at some big cushy tech company where I get paid $120k/yr for working basically 30 hrs a week. I do what I can in the evenings, but there's no way I'll achieve what I could have if I had studied math for 4 straight years when I was single and had no responsibilities.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
    That's totally fair, but that's more about where you are in life than it is about the education system. I thought this thread was more about people getting out of college with the wrong skills, at which point new skills are still very much achievable. I'm at the point in my life where I'm regretful the other direction. I wish I could go back in time and double major or minor in creative writing. I have the money and decent career, now I'm working on getting good at something I'm passionate about.
assblaster 7y ago
You think an undergraduate degree in neuroscience was a waste of money.. that might be true for you but not universally. You could have used it as a basis for a career in pharmaceutical research, medicine, investing, venture capital, science journalism, psychology, machine learning, etc. If you had an engineering degree, you could say that is useless because your current job as a stage actor doesn't utilize any of those learned skills.
- outlace 7y ago
  I went to medical school. I'm now a resident physician in psychiatry, which is becoming more and more a kind of clinical neuroscience. And I still think my undergraduate neuroscience degree was a waste of time and money. Neuroscience isn't a skill. I would have been much better off with a math or computer science degree. I re-learned all the relevant neuroscience I needed in medical school and am learning more specialized knowledge on my own as it pertains to my career. I'm not trying to make a subjective point that neuroscience was bad for me. I turned out ok in the end, I'm a physician now. I'm making the distinction between knowledge-based degrees (which are easily learned outside of paying for a degree) and skill-based degrees, which may include stage acting. You can't learn stage acting from a book, you can learn neuroscience facts from a book. If I had a math degree, I could have still gone to medical school, and could still become a psychiatrist. But I would have also been able to appreciate Einstein's theory of relativity (as a recreational endeavor) or been able to contribute to the burgeoning field of computational psychiatry as a clinician-researcher. Now consider an alternative path, I majored in mathematics, joined a quantitative hedge fund and realized I was losing my soul and wanted to do something more fulfilling. So I take my spoils and enroll in some stage acting classes, and eventually land a nice role at a local playhouse. Is my math degree useless? Perhaps not very useful to my stage acting career, but at least I can appreciate the beauty of Einstein's theory of relativity. Or go back to a quant hedge fund if acting doesn't work out. Or many, many other things, because I have a skill that is foundational to many other areas.
  - drblast 7y ago
    This makes a lot of sense. If I might restate it: There are certain fields of study that lend themselves to a college format, where you'd benefit from doing things hands on with lectures and instruction. Not every field of study, including those that can be extremely valuable, has this feature. Acknowledging that the one-size-fits-all college lecture/homework/test format is not the ideal way to learn everything might help us figure out how to learn more efficiently.

0xcafecafe 7y ago

I agree with what you are saying but it is still not out of time for you. You can start building up your math repertoire by starting simple in something like Khan academy and working your way up. You can eventually also try free courses which universities offer online. Most of the math I know is not due to have amazing mentorship but being forced to do the exercises day in day out.

sunshinelackof 7y ago

Calling a degree useless because its value is not realized by the market today is myopic. If there were an explicit disincentive to study neuroscience, it's very unlikely that you would have textbooks summarizing decades of work in neuroscience. This sort of thing basically existed in 1800's with surgeons. They weren't valued for their work and had a social stigma placed upon them. It took surgery a century to dig out of that hole, only thanks to the people who were dedicated enough to it.

JudgeWapner 7y ago
why can't you do anything with a neuroscience degree? Because of a variant of reglatory capture that prohibits you from doing much more than emptying bedpans with the degree. I know there has to be some regulation in medicine, but it's often abused to the point that a Bachelor's degree only gets you to the most basic, monkey-can-do-it jobs.
outlace 7y ago
I disagree strongly. Neuroscience as it is taught at the undergraduate level is just a body of knowledge you are tasked with memorizing. I can’t think of any job that just requires you to spit out answers to multiple choice questions about neuroscience or anything else for that matter. Surgery, however, is a skill that is honed by repetition. You can’t learn surgery from a book. This is the point I’m making. Skills matter and it may be worth it to pursue a skill-based degree but knowledge is cheap. Why spend $30k/yr getting a degree in neuroscience when you could buy the same textbooks, memorize the same information and yet only spend a few hundred dollars on the books themselves? I’m not saying neuroscience knowledge isn’t valuable, I’m saying it doesn’t make sense to go get a 4 year degree out of it. The most valuable things I gained out of my college experience were extracurriculars working in a research lab (gained practical research skills), leadership skills from starting and running student organizations, and work skills from a part time job. And there certainly still would be textbooks even if there were no undergraduate neuroscience major. You could still pursue a graduate degree where you take some classes but then spend most of your time building skills and working toward a real contribution to the field.
chrshawkes 7y ago
You make a good point. The US Army treated contract surgeons terribly in the 19th century. Look at the case of Dr. Porter from Custer's Last Stand, he didn't even get an award for his bravery.
tathougies 7y ago
> It took surgery a century to dig out of that hole, only thanks to the people who were dedicated enough to it. Surgery wasn't valued because it was mostly a quack science at the time.

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago

That's BS. I graduated about a decade ago and had a similar realization and self-studied my way through a whole bunch of my missing foundations. I've worked my way through at least a dozen multi-course textbooks and who knows how many papers over the last decade and have really filled in the gaps in my knowledge. It's paid off quite well for me. Saying it's out of reach is ridiculous, since you're talking about years of effort. Be patient and just do it.

outlace 7y ago
Yes I know it's not literally impossible for me to self-study quantum field theory (or insert other math-heavy discipline) and I have been self-studying math and have made significant progress over the last few years. But I went through medical school and have 2 kids now, so there just isn't time in the day to put in the hours to get to where I want to be in a reasonable amount of time. I don't work at some big cushy tech company where I get paid $120k/yr for working basically 30 hrs a week. I do what I can in the evenings, but there's no way I'll achieve what I could have if I had studied math for 4 straight years when I was single and had no responsibilities.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  That's totally fair, but that's more about where you are in life than it is about the education system. I thought this thread was more about people getting out of college with the wrong skills, at which point new skills are still very much achievable. I'm at the point in my life where I'm regretful the other direction. I wish I could go back in time and double major or minor in creative writing. I have the money and decent career, now I'm working on getting good at something I'm passionate about.

assblaster 7y ago

You think an undergraduate degree in neuroscience was a waste of money.. that might be true for you but not universally. You could have used it as a basis for a career in pharmaceutical research, medicine, investing, venture capital, science journalism, psychology, machine learning, etc. If you had an engineering degree, you could say that is useless because your current job as a stage actor doesn't utilize any of those learned skills.

outlace 7y ago
I went to medical school. I'm now a resident physician in psychiatry, which is becoming more and more a kind of clinical neuroscience. And I still think my undergraduate neuroscience degree was a waste of time and money. Neuroscience isn't a skill. I would have been much better off with a math or computer science degree. I re-learned all the relevant neuroscience I needed in medical school and am learning more specialized knowledge on my own as it pertains to my career. I'm not trying to make a subjective point that neuroscience was bad for me. I turned out ok in the end, I'm a physician now. I'm making the distinction between knowledge-based degrees (which are easily learned outside of paying for a degree) and skill-based degrees, which may include stage acting. You can't learn stage acting from a book, you can learn neuroscience facts from a book. If I had a math degree, I could have still gone to medical school, and could still become a psychiatrist. But I would have also been able to appreciate Einstein's theory of relativity (as a recreational endeavor) or been able to contribute to the burgeoning field of computational psychiatry as a clinician-researcher. Now consider an alternative path, I majored in mathematics, joined a quantitative hedge fund and realized I was losing my soul and wanted to do something more fulfilling. So I take my spoils and enroll in some stage acting classes, and eventually land a nice role at a local playhouse. Is my math degree useless? Perhaps not very useful to my stage acting career, but at least I can appreciate the beauty of Einstein's theory of relativity. Or go back to a quant hedge fund if acting doesn't work out. Or many, many other things, because I have a skill that is foundational to many other areas.
- drblast 7y ago
  This makes a lot of sense. If I might restate it: There are certain fields of study that lend themselves to a college format, where you'd benefit from doing things hands on with lectures and instruction. Not every field of study, including those that can be extremely valuable, has this feature. Acknowledging that the one-size-fits-all college lecture/homework/test format is not the ideal way to learn everything might help us figure out how to learn more efficiently.