Yes. Simple-minded is an obnoxious word; brainwashed gets closer to it but implies too much a malevolent force at work. Cold statistics are one thing, but ever

Yes. Simple-minded is an obnoxious word; brainwashed gets closer to it but implies too much a malevolent force at work. Cold statistics are one thing, but everyone has trouble actually chewing them over when every part of your environment is telling you "all you need to do is go to college, and everything will work out fine." If you know the ins and outs of how post-college employment works, you're working from a position of stark informational privilege compared to someone who doesn't. The people who succeed as English majors are much louder than the large majority who don't, and the people selling the English majors certainly aren't telling them they have a decent chance of ending up immiserated. If you genuinely enjoy English literature and writing, it's easy to fall into that trap. Many people here majored in CS, and that's awesome and has worked out well for them. But I would also take a gander that, going into college, those people weren't blank slates who had no love of CS and just did a mechanical calculation as to what would generate the most time-discounted income years. They had worked with computers in the past and loved it. It's very easy to overlook how much emotional or arational factors plays into your own choices while condemning those whose arational choices end up tossing them into another bin. Obviously the choices people make aren't totally ignorant of economic factors, but they also aren't determined by them.