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It's hard to pick an economically viable major. There are lots of difficult fields to study that just don't pay well due to competition. People tend to think S

It's hard to pick an economically viable major. There are lots of difficult fields to study that just don't pay well due to competition. People tend to think Science = STEM = Guaranteed Job, but that is not the case. Lots of sciences don't make much money, especially the ones driven by passion. Others are highly geographically dependent, so mining engineers might have a median salary of $80k after five years, but 80% of those people live in a handful of rural states. Also, a lot can change in the four to seven years it takes to complete school. A recession can drive a large of people into "safe" majors, like accounting, making it more difficult for new graduates to onboard. And other fields can shrink or disappear almost entirely within that time period. That being said, these people didn't have to settle for serving drinks in a bar. They could have searched employment in tangentially-related fields or learned some more technical skills. They could have also relocated. Maybe those were not options for whatever reason, but in general, those are things successful people do. Because the job market is going to change wildly during the 40+ years you'll be employed.

twomoretime 7y ago
>There are lots of difficult fields to study that just don't pay well due to competition That may be the case, but speaking as a recent young person, the vast majority of college students I met did no actual research regarding the employability of their majors. It's also a disservice to group soft and hard sciences together under STEM - because you end up with millions of children who can't hack it in math, but they hear that psychology or sociology are STEM and therefore a meal ticket, and end up taking out loans for a worthless degree simply because they had it drilled in their heads that they needed to go to college and major in something "useful".
- syedkarim 7y ago
  Why is this being downvoted? Strange. I graduated in 2007 and your observation is the same as mine. Students go to school without really thinking about what is next. I'm guessing that is a result of a middle/upper middle class upbringing. I noticed international students were a lot more driven, on average. I went to a small, liberal arts college that was not highly selective in admissions. Even with the talented and studious, very few had any real idea of what was next. Why do we encourage so much debt just for the supposed sake of edification. I will say, though, that it was a really fun time in my life. So maybe that's worth it?
  - TuringNYC 7y ago
    I think lots of it is due to bad biased advice. True story, on my first day of college, at the convocation, the university president told his true story about how he decided to stay at university for an extra year "to study the classics" and what an amazing decision this was for him. He encouraged everyone to seek erudition. I wonder how many students accepted that as fact. Because it is indeed a great strategy if you are wealthy and have a social-network safety net waiting to bail you out with a nice job after graduation. But for working class students like myself, it is horrible advice. I couldn't have graduated a moment too soon, I need to help my mom with rent, pay loans, etc. You have wealthy "successful" academics and others giving advice that is noble but unrealistic and downright harmful in some cases.
- tengbretson 7y ago
  I truly believe that it should be illegal for state-funded universities to collect tuition from students that are "undecided" in their major.
  - mikeg8 7y ago
    So students remain undecided as long as possible to enroll in as many undergrad classes as possible? your proposition makes no sense to me. I believe as an 18 year old, you need to begin seriously taking responsibility for your decisions, and if you choose to go to school, you absolutely should pay for it. the cost argument is totally separate, colleges should be much more affordable IMO, but there shouldn't be free rides for remaining "undeclared", that would have perverse incentives.
    - tengbretson 7y ago
      I guess what I said was too ambiguous. What I meant was that undecided or undeclared should not even be allowed to go to university
      - alistairSH 7y ago
        I'm not sure I agree with that. I was undecided for 2 years (of the typical 4 at a US institution). It wasn't a problem and didn't cost me anything. Expecting an 18 year old to commit to a program seems a bit excessive (yes, we do it for professional programs like nursing and engineering - but not all students are the same, both of those programs have high wash-out rates, and at least with engineering, if you get a job doing other things).
- 0d9eooo 7y ago
  It's more complicated, and a deeper problem than that. For example, I'm one of those former psych majors, and though those majors are full of people who aren't good at math, there's also a lot of them who know more computer science and math than some of the comp sci majors I've worked with. In fact, a common problem for psych majors and other students is to take the first couple of psych courses, think it's a breeze, and then hit advanced courses with cognitive modeling, neuroscience, epidemiology, and genetics, and realize it is basically STEM. The problem with this is that everyone who took those first couple of classes, or didn't, has this stereotype of psych as all involving people laying around on couches discussing past lives or something. So you might have a psych major who did a thesis involving neural network models and cognition, maybe with some imaging involving a cutting edge system in the imaging center, working with physicists, and they will get looked down on by employers. Meanwhile the comp sci undergrad who barely gets python and did their group final project on some kind of toy webapp is qualified. I have family who are making significant money in web development who are actually English majors, who just happened to have the right connections at the right time. When I was in undergrad, comp sci was filled with a glut of unmotivated students who just wanted a degree for a job, and we were all being told that there wasn't going to be demand for comp sci degrees because there would be too many grads in it and you could always learn that stuff through different means. My father, who is now in medical administration with an MD, talked me out of biochem and biology degrees because he couldn't find employment with those degrees and had to go on to grad school. So what do we make of a degree? Does my dad's biochem degree suddenly become more valuable when it's a stepping stone to an MD program? Did that family member with a "worthless" liberal arts degree waste their money when they're making a comfortable income in the tech sector? The deeper problem is that people are seen one-dimensionally, as equal to some degree, rather than their experiences, like college is some glorified vocational certification program. Whenever we talk about "worthwhile" versus "worthless" degrees at some level what we're accepting is this idea that someone's skillset is defined by the degree, rather than the degree being an indicator of part of a skillset. Society used to see things in the latter way, and at some point it transitioned to the former.
  - verall 7y ago
    I'd say a bigger problem isn't that undergraduate psych is easy, but rather just that _so many_ students that don't really know what they want to do take it, causing like a permanent glut of psych undergrads. My major was also very popular, but about 1/3 students in computer engineering drop or switch majors, most after the first year. Fair or not weedouts and things to reduce the glut of undergrads. At least at my school the graduation rate for the psych school was way higher.
- chillacy 7y ago
  Just to put numbers on that, nothing pays off quite like science and engineering: https://studentloanhero.com/featured/majors-students-debt/ https://studentloanhero.com/featured/majors-students-debt/
HarryHirsch 7y ago
That being said, these people didn't have to settle for serving drinks in a bar. I'm familiar with a certain materials science startup in England that lost out on a round of funding in the dotcom bust and went bankrupt soon after. The chief chemist, a very capable man, went back to his native country in the Former Eastern Bloc and worked in a shipyard for a couple of years. It was that bad.
- jgalt212 7y ago
  but his similarly skilled native born co-worker, probably found his footing in a decent job. The privileges of citizenship. And I don't say that in a sarcastic way.
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    There was nothing that the OP said that would imply the person wasn't a citizen, much less that they had troubles because of their citizenship.
hnburnsy 7y ago
One way in the US to help pick an economically viable major is to use the BLS Occupational Outlook... https://www.bls.gov/ooh/mobile/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/mobile/home.htm It gives estimates of salary and future demand for pretty much all occupations. Recommend this to your children to help them understand how their major selection could impact their future career.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mettamage 7y ago
  Even as a non-American, this is fascinating. I wonder if other countries have it.
- eulers_secret 7y ago
  This is fun to look at! Computer and Information Technology Occupations: Computer Programmers: $86,550 Software Developers: $107,510 Web Developers: $73,760 I think the difference in pay is because they state Web Dev requires an associates degree, the other two a bachelor's. Of course, this data is generalized. I am an SWE, with an associates. I make a little more than their "Software Developer" role. Also suggests there may be a lot of devs who don't respond to salary threads.
jackcosgrove 7y ago
Colleges should not even offer loans for non-viable majors. Picking a major should not be like Indiana Jones picking which grail to drink from.
- fossuser 7y ago
  Even better would be true market rate pricing for majors. Why are all majors 4 years? Why does a poetry major cost the same as an engineering major? The universities say there's value in a liberal arts education beyond actual economic value? Fine, but someone is going to be subsidizing it somewhere - if the schools actually value it beyond the market rate and want to donate funds from more economically viable majors to it then fine, but it shouldn't be the students paying for the overpriced poetry degree. If degree costs were reflective of their true economic value then there would be less risk. An economically useless degree would at least be cheap in cost (if not in time). All majors being the same length and cost is a sign that something is broken.
- matwood 7y ago
  > Colleges should not even offer loans for non-viable majors. Oddly enough, a couple of the best programmers I have ever work with are now CTOs at their respective companies. One of them had an english degree and the other a music degree. Just yesterday there was an article here on HN about the importance of writing. So, which majors would you consider non-viable?
  - someguydave 7y ago
    Would you agree that their college education was a waste of time and money?
    - matwood 7y ago
      Not at all. In fact the english degree is probably one of the more useful degrees to have. Knowing how to write and communicate effectively is key to many jobs, and is useful over an entire career. I should add, that he told me he even felt this way. I'm not so sure about the music degree, but I can see the general skills of being detail oriented and working with a team as an IC to create something bigger as key life skills useful in any job. Meanwhile, I got a CS degree when OO was big and nearly minored in business. I haven't looked at OO in years for programming, but the business courses I took have been key every step of my career. I wish I had taken more writing classes.
LudwigNagasena 7y ago
You make it sound more complicated than it is. Good grades and a degree in Math/CS/Statistics/Physics/Engineering (or Business/Finance/Economics in a top uni) = high paying job. Life sciences pay much less unless you are ready to pursue a PhD or MD, in such case the numbers are somewhat comparable. A person who pursued biochemistry bachelor as a terminal degree or studied English literature has all information to know the opportunity costs of their decisions.

twomoretime 7y ago

>There are lots of difficult fields to study that just don't pay well due to competition That may be the case, but speaking as a recent young person, the vast majority of college students I met did no actual research regarding the employability of their majors. It's also a disservice to group soft and hard sciences together under STEM - because you end up with millions of children who can't hack it in math, but they hear that psychology or sociology are STEM and therefore a meal ticket, and end up taking out loans for a worthless degree simply because they had it drilled in their heads that they needed to go to college and major in something "useful".

syedkarim 7y ago
Why is this being downvoted? Strange. I graduated in 2007 and your observation is the same as mine. Students go to school without really thinking about what is next. I'm guessing that is a result of a middle/upper middle class upbringing. I noticed international students were a lot more driven, on average. I went to a small, liberal arts college that was not highly selective in admissions. Even with the talented and studious, very few had any real idea of what was next. Why do we encourage so much debt just for the supposed sake of edification. I will say, though, that it was a really fun time in my life. So maybe that's worth it?
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  I think lots of it is due to bad biased advice. True story, on my first day of college, at the convocation, the university president told his true story about how he decided to stay at university for an extra year "to study the classics" and what an amazing decision this was for him. He encouraged everyone to seek erudition. I wonder how many students accepted that as fact. Because it is indeed a great strategy if you are wealthy and have a social-network safety net waiting to bail you out with a nice job after graduation. But for working class students like myself, it is horrible advice. I couldn't have graduated a moment too soon, I need to help my mom with rent, pay loans, etc. You have wealthy "successful" academics and others giving advice that is noble but unrealistic and downright harmful in some cases.
tengbretson 7y ago
I truly believe that it should be illegal for state-funded universities to collect tuition from students that are "undecided" in their major.
- mikeg8 7y ago
  So students remain undecided as long as possible to enroll in as many undergrad classes as possible? your proposition makes no sense to me. I believe as an 18 year old, you need to begin seriously taking responsibility for your decisions, and if you choose to go to school, you absolutely should pay for it. the cost argument is totally separate, colleges should be much more affordable IMO, but there shouldn't be free rides for remaining "undeclared", that would have perverse incentives.
  - tengbretson 7y ago
    I guess what I said was too ambiguous. What I meant was that undecided or undeclared should not even be allowed to go to university
    - alistairSH 7y ago
      I'm not sure I agree with that. I was undecided for 2 years (of the typical 4 at a US institution). It wasn't a problem and didn't cost me anything. Expecting an 18 year old to commit to a program seems a bit excessive (yes, we do it for professional programs like nursing and engineering - but not all students are the same, both of those programs have high wash-out rates, and at least with engineering, if you get a job doing other things).
0d9eooo 7y ago
It's more complicated, and a deeper problem than that. For example, I'm one of those former psych majors, and though those majors are full of people who aren't good at math, there's also a lot of them who know more computer science and math than some of the comp sci majors I've worked with. In fact, a common problem for psych majors and other students is to take the first couple of psych courses, think it's a breeze, and then hit advanced courses with cognitive modeling, neuroscience, epidemiology, and genetics, and realize it is basically STEM. The problem with this is that everyone who took those first couple of classes, or didn't, has this stereotype of psych as all involving people laying around on couches discussing past lives or something. So you might have a psych major who did a thesis involving neural network models and cognition, maybe with some imaging involving a cutting edge system in the imaging center, working with physicists, and they will get looked down on by employers. Meanwhile the comp sci undergrad who barely gets python and did their group final project on some kind of toy webapp is qualified. I have family who are making significant money in web development who are actually English majors, who just happened to have the right connections at the right time. When I was in undergrad, comp sci was filled with a glut of unmotivated students who just wanted a degree for a job, and we were all being told that there wasn't going to be demand for comp sci degrees because there would be too many grads in it and you could always learn that stuff through different means. My father, who is now in medical administration with an MD, talked me out of biochem and biology degrees because he couldn't find employment with those degrees and had to go on to grad school. So what do we make of a degree? Does my dad's biochem degree suddenly become more valuable when it's a stepping stone to an MD program? Did that family member with a "worthless" liberal arts degree waste their money when they're making a comfortable income in the tech sector? The deeper problem is that people are seen one-dimensionally, as equal to some degree, rather than their experiences, like college is some glorified vocational certification program. Whenever we talk about "worthwhile" versus "worthless" degrees at some level what we're accepting is this idea that someone's skillset is defined by the degree, rather than the degree being an indicator of part of a skillset. Society used to see things in the latter way, and at some point it transitioned to the former.
- verall 7y ago
  I'd say a bigger problem isn't that undergraduate psych is easy, but rather just that _so many_ students that don't really know what they want to do take it, causing like a permanent glut of psych undergrads. My major was also very popular, but about 1/3 students in computer engineering drop or switch majors, most after the first year. Fair or not weedouts and things to reduce the glut of undergrads. At least at my school the graduation rate for the psych school was way higher.
chillacy 7y ago
Just to put numbers on that, nothing pays off quite like science and engineering: https://studentloanhero.com/featured/majors-students-debt/ https://studentloanhero.com/featured/majors-students-debt/

HarryHirsch 7y ago

That being said, these people didn't have to settle for serving drinks in a bar. I'm familiar with a certain materials science startup in England that lost out on a round of funding in the dotcom bust and went bankrupt soon after. The chief chemist, a very capable man, went back to his native country in the Former Eastern Bloc and worked in a shipyard for a couple of years. It was that bad.

jgalt212 7y ago
but his similarly skilled native born co-worker, probably found his footing in a decent job. The privileges of citizenship. And I don't say that in a sarcastic way.
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  There was nothing that the OP said that would imply the person wasn't a citizen, much less that they had troubles because of their citizenship.

hnburnsy 7y ago

One way in the US to help pick an economically viable major is to use the BLS Occupational Outlook... https://www.bls.gov/ooh/mobile/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/mobile/home.htm It gives estimates of salary and future demand for pretty much all occupations. Recommend this to your children to help them understand how their major selection could impact their future career.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mettamage 7y ago
Even as a non-American, this is fascinating. I wonder if other countries have it.
eulers_secret 7y ago
This is fun to look at! Computer and Information Technology Occupations: Computer Programmers: $86,550 Software Developers: $107,510 Web Developers: $73,760 I think the difference in pay is because they state Web Dev requires an associates degree, the other two a bachelor's. Of course, this data is generalized. I am an SWE, with an associates. I make a little more than their "Software Developer" role. Also suggests there may be a lot of devs who don't respond to salary threads.

jackcosgrove 7y ago

Colleges should not even offer loans for non-viable majors. Picking a major should not be like Indiana Jones picking which grail to drink from.

fossuser 7y ago
Even better would be true market rate pricing for majors. Why are all majors 4 years? Why does a poetry major cost the same as an engineering major? The universities say there's value in a liberal arts education beyond actual economic value? Fine, but someone is going to be subsidizing it somewhere - if the schools actually value it beyond the market rate and want to donate funds from more economically viable majors to it then fine, but it shouldn't be the students paying for the overpriced poetry degree. If degree costs were reflective of their true economic value then there would be less risk. An economically useless degree would at least be cheap in cost (if not in time). All majors being the same length and cost is a sign that something is broken.
matwood 7y ago
> Colleges should not even offer loans for non-viable majors. Oddly enough, a couple of the best programmers I have ever work with are now CTOs at their respective companies. One of them had an english degree and the other a music degree. Just yesterday there was an article here on HN about the importance of writing. So, which majors would you consider non-viable?
- someguydave 7y ago
  Would you agree that their college education was a waste of time and money?
  - matwood 7y ago
    Not at all. In fact the english degree is probably one of the more useful degrees to have. Knowing how to write and communicate effectively is key to many jobs, and is useful over an entire career. I should add, that he told me he even felt this way. I'm not so sure about the music degree, but I can see the general skills of being detail oriented and working with a team as an IC to create something bigger as key life skills useful in any job. Meanwhile, I got a CS degree when OO was big and nearly minored in business. I haven't looked at OO in years for programming, but the business courses I took have been key every step of my career. I wish I had taken more writing classes.

LudwigNagasena 7y ago

You make it sound more complicated than it is. Good grades and a degree in Math/CS/Statistics/Physics/Engineering (or Business/Finance/Economics in a top uni) = high paying job. Life sciences pay much less unless you are ready to pursue a PhD or MD, in such case the numbers are somewhat comparable. A person who pursued biochemistry bachelor as a terminal degree or studied English literature has all information to know the opportunity costs of their decisions.