There's a big sunk cost falacy at play. English is one of the most common majors at Umass, and the university isn't exactly forthcoming about the job prospects

There's a big sunk cost falacy at play. English is one of the most common majors at Umass, and the university isn't exactly forthcoming about the job prospects for this major. This person was the first to go to college in their family - but their parents had become modestly successfuly in the trades meaning they made ~100k combined in the Boston area. 100k is enough to push you out of substantial financial aid, but is not enough for your parents to afford a significant portion of your college costs in a high CoL area. A 3 bedroom and 2 kids gets expensive. If you realize 2 years in that you're down ~60k, and a 5 year program will cost an extra 40k then you aren't going to change majors. Umass Amherst is only ~25% more expensive than Umass Dartmouth on paper ( or at least was when I was attending ). For myself, I got a physics degree and flipped into software engineering - I went bust in my first 2 years out of school but I was able to put things together and paid off my debt comfortably. The debt did ensure I stopped pursuing grad school for physics as the math became impossible to justify.