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This quote is interesting, perhaps why so many are looking for a tech cofounder? According to the Education Department, the top majors for the class of 2008 we

by netmau5 16y ago

This quote is interesting, perhaps why so many are looking for a tech cofounder? According to the Education Department, the top majors for the class of 2008 were business, health sciences and social sciences and history. About nine times as many people majored in business in the class of 2008 as majored in computer science.

nostrademons 16y ago
Yeah, I remember an old boss of mine (then teaching robotics at WPI) complaining about how the number of "sports medicine" majors was 3-4x the number of CS & Robotics majors. The world does not need that many sports physiologists! I suspect a lot of it is because very few high school students have an understanding of how the real economy works. A lot of them want money as an adult, and they hear that business is about making money, and so they major in business, not realizing that an undergraduate business degree is virtually useless in actually doing things that will make you lots of money. Heck, I went to a liberal arts college, thinking that I wanted to learn things from lots of different skillsets because that's what an entrepreneur needs, and not realizing that basically all those skillsets are useless for entrepreneurship. (Well, except the scientific method. And math. And computer programming. And writing. Hmm, maybe I didn't do too badly.) I wonder what it'd take to better educate children about how the working world actually operates, so that they can make informed decisions in the future. Ones with high-powered professional parents probably get it at home, but this just increases the income divide. People whose parents work at middle-class, unionized jobs - the ones who really need the guidance to compete in today's economy - are way behind the 8-ball in terms of cultural capital.
- yannickmahe 16y ago
  I believe there is a strong cultural bias to where people go when they graduate. In France, the situation seems to be the exact opposite to the one in the US: there are 6 times more engineering schools as there are business schools. France being a country where business is something regarded with suspicion while in the US it has such an aura, which explains this state of affairs quite well.
- protomyth 16y ago
  I remember a story about my old college that said anyone who had too many credits and hadn't selected a major automatically got assigned to Business School - Advertising.

by netmau5 16y ago

nostrademons 16y ago

Yeah, I remember an old boss of mine (then teaching robotics at WPI) complaining about how the number of "sports medicine" majors was 3-4x the number of CS & Robotics majors. The world does not need that many sports physiologists! I suspect a lot of it is because very few high school students have an understanding of how the real economy works. A lot of them want money as an adult, and they hear that business is about making money, and so they major in business, not realizing that an undergraduate business degree is virtually useless in actually doing things that will make you lots of money. Heck, I went to a liberal arts college, thinking that I wanted to learn things from lots of different skillsets because that's what an entrepreneur needs, and not realizing that basically all those skillsets are useless for entrepreneurship. (Well, except the scientific method. And math. And computer programming. And writing. Hmm, maybe I didn't do too badly.) I wonder what it'd take to better educate children about how the working world actually operates, so that they can make informed decisions in the future. Ones with high-powered professional parents probably get it at home, but this just increases the income divide. People whose parents work at middle-class, unionized jobs - the ones who really need the guidance to compete in today's economy - are way behind the 8-ball in terms of cultural capital.

yannickmahe 16y ago
I believe there is a strong cultural bias to where people go when they graduate. In France, the situation seems to be the exact opposite to the one in the US: there are 6 times more engineering schools as there are business schools. France being a country where business is something regarded with suspicion while in the US it has such an aura, which explains this state of affairs quite well.
protomyth 16y ago
I remember a story about my old college that said anyone who had too many credits and hadn't selected a major automatically got assigned to Business School - Advertising.