I think we may differ about the value of a commerce or business degree vs an engineering degree. My experience is that engineering grads from top schools have

I think we may differ about the value of a commerce or business degree vs an engineering degree. My experience is that engineering grads from top schools have a very easy time getting hired into lucrative financial or other non-engineering firms, and that business/commerce is not nearly as widely respected a major (a few notable programs aside (wharton, berkeley), most top universities don't have a business or commerce major). As for the law degree... law (at least in the US) is almost always a graduate degree, so we'd be comparing a JD with either a MS (a little shorter) or a PhD (much longer), not a BA or BS. A chem engineering grad can go to law school and will have more options than most other majors (I read somewhere that IP firms have the highest per-partner profits, and getting a job is easier as there are very few law grads with this background). Of course, the presence of lucrative professions that can be entered without these difficult undergrad degrees certainly should play into the calculation. If you can do well with a law degree regardless of major, well then why bother with something hard? Ok, so your options are slightly reduced, but as long as they're really good (and they tend to be for top law grads regardless of undergrad major), people may decide that the ROI on engineering vs economics or even art history just isn't worth it. Sounds like your buddy made this calculation and acted on it. Still, I think the picture is discouraging for PhDs in STEM fields (though better than the utter misery of PhDs in the humanities), whereas I'd still say that majoring at the undergrad level in engineering or hard science puts you in the position where you have the most options leaving college, though it is also a very difficult course of study.