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This has the usual journalist bias of putting all graduates in the same bucket. I would like to see the same statistic, but with Mathematics, Physics, Chemistr

This has the usual journalist bias of putting all graduates in the same bucket. I would like to see the same statistic, but with Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, EE, Mechanical Eng., etc all in their own buckets. There seems to be some kind of outrage that you can go to a good school and get a 4 year degree and end up working with people who just graduated high-school. New grads were probably led up the garden path and not given realistic expectations. On the other hand everybody knows there are no jobs for English, Communications, Journalism, or any of the various 'Unemployment Studies' programs. Everyone knows this, it's past common knowledge and well on it's way to becoming a cliche. Basically, I guess you can boil down what I'm saying as, "If you partied in college, and didn't take classes that were hard: you didn't learn anything, and that is why nobody will pay you for access to your training." It used to be that certain kinds of jobs were reserved for a 'college man', but that was because that was synonymous with white and upper middle to upper class. The great liar, statistics, said that a college degree was highly correlated with lots of great outcomes, higher income, better employment, etc. The government started laying lots of money into getting everyone to go to college, without realizing that people weren't paying for the college part of college grads, they were paying for the stuff that college was correlated with. Like if the British started sending more people to Eton because they wanted to increase the size of the royal family. These days who you know matters as much as ever. However, and this is kind of new, since the 20th century (or post Edison anyway), you can have a very comfortable and low risk life regardless of where you started, if you can learn enough technical stuff. Rich people and companies will pay to rent your brain all day. They will only pay, though, if your brain can do things that most brains can't, it's like anything else, value comes from scarcity. So, if you are going to Harvard and your dad went to Harvard and your parents friends are as rich as they are, study whatever, you'll be fine. If your parents had to show up to work and had a boss, or worse if you are on scholarship, for the love of god study something with some cash value. “I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, natural history and naval architecture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry, and porcelain.” - John Adams

xijuan 14y ago
I don't like what you said. You made it sound like that English and Journalism are easy majors. Even though it is harder to find jobs with those majors right now, they are not necessarily easy majors. In fact, depending on your talents,these majors can be very hard. Taking me as an example, I can never imagine myself majoring in English or Journalism because I dislike writing and I have never done too well in my English courses. To me these two majors would be harder than Math and Chemistry. On the other hand, my friend who is a history major is naturally good at writing but has very difficult times understanding Math related materials. I always admire her for her writing skills and always ask her for help when it comes to writing application and essays. She always wishes that she could be good at Math. Also what majors make good money also depends on the time we are living in. I don't know about American history but I know in Chinese history during the 1910s,people with arts majors would make more money. At that times, China was going through an intellectual revolution in which Western ideas were being introduced. At that times, many scholars would abandon their engineering, economic and medicine degrees and become writers or journalists. Edit: I don't live in China....
- idiot900 14y ago
  No. He was commenting primarily on the low market value of English/Communications/etc, and less on whether they are easy things to do. They may be quite hard, but it's easier for an engineer to get paid to be an engineer than it is for humanities majors to do likewise and be paid the same amount. Yes it depends on what time we are living in, but currently we are living in the present.
- justin_vanw 14y ago
  I have no idea what the difficulty of various majors are in China. Now, let me put this caveat in the front: At a good University, there are people who are serious and will amaze you in the following majors. Those people will be successful, and go on to graduate school and eventually become academics. But that doesn't change the fact that... In America, the following majors are a joke. If you are bright and can read wikipedia, you will find that two hours of reading will leave you ahead of 90% of the people majoring in these things in knowledge of their major: Criminal Justice History Journalism English Kinesiology Communications Anthropology Religious Studies, Comparative Religions And of course there are things that are more about passion and talent: Anything Art (Film, painting, photography, music)

xijuan 14y ago

I don't like what you said. You made it sound like that English and Journalism are easy majors. Even though it is harder to find jobs with those majors right now, they are not necessarily easy majors. In fact, depending on your talents,these majors can be very hard. Taking me as an example, I can never imagine myself majoring in English or Journalism because I dislike writing and I have never done too well in my English courses. To me these two majors would be harder than Math and Chemistry. On the other hand, my friend who is a history major is naturally good at writing but has very difficult times understanding Math related materials. I always admire her for her writing skills and always ask her for help when it comes to writing application and essays. She always wishes that she could be good at Math. Also what majors make good money also depends on the time we are living in. I don't know about American history but I know in Chinese history during the 1910s,people with arts majors would make more money. At that times, China was going through an intellectual revolution in which Western ideas were being introduced. At that times, many scholars would abandon their engineering, economic and medicine degrees and become writers or journalists. Edit: I don't live in China....

idiot900 14y ago
No. He was commenting primarily on the low market value of English/Communications/etc, and less on whether they are easy things to do. They may be quite hard, but it's easier for an engineer to get paid to be an engineer than it is for humanities majors to do likewise and be paid the same amount. Yes it depends on what time we are living in, but currently we are living in the present.
justin_vanw 14y ago
I have no idea what the difficulty of various majors are in China. Now, let me put this caveat in the front: At a good University, there are people who are serious and will amaze you in the following majors. Those people will be successful, and go on to graduate school and eventually become academics. But that doesn't change the fact that... In America, the following majors are a joke. If you are bright and can read wikipedia, you will find that two hours of reading will leave you ahead of 90% of the people majoring in these things in knowledge of their major: Criminal Justice History Journalism English Kinesiology Communications Anthropology Religious Studies, Comparative Religions And of course there are things that are more about passion and talent: Anything Art (Film, painting, photography, music)