A long time ago, I was driving to pick up my kids from school when I heard a piece on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” about how to choose a major for college in tough economic times. This was back during the recession of 2008 and 2009. The piece was headlined by a professor of labor statistics, whose basic argument is that students need to consider the return on investment (ROI) when choosing a college major. They need to understand, he argued, that certain fields will have a bigger payoff. Health care was one of his primary examples: the industry is booming, so his advice was to head for jobs in that sector.
As I listened, the piece grated on me because only one viewpoint was represented here. Specifically, the viewpoint is the idea that education is primarily about getting a job. What was missing was the perspective of those who see education as an edifying experience, who believe that “training the brain” to be nimble, and to be able to “learn how to learn” are the chief values of education (for an explanation of this alternative point of view, see this post).
As part of the broader process of learning how to apply to college, selecting a major that balances career alignment with personal fulfillment is a decision that deserves careful, strategic thought—and ideally, expert guidance. Our approach starts not with a list of “hot” majors, but with understanding the student themselves—their strengths, their weaknesses, and what genuinely motivates them.
Technology Disruption Impacts Job Creation and College Major Demand
Furthermore, many observers (Thomas Friedman, Daniel Pink) have pointed out that many of today’s top-earning jobs didn’t exist ten years ago. And while the professor identified healthcare as a good field to head for, we can also bet that the healthcare industry may undergo tectonic shifts in the next decade (hello, Artificial Intelligence).
Speaking of AI, a Computer Science undergraduate degree was once viewed as a ticket to, at a minimum, a stable and well-paying job that delivered a tremendous ROI. However, that theory is now in question as AI evolves, disrupting jobs such as software development.
Software Development Job Postings on Indeed
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
This ‘AI Threat’ to computer programming is now making families begin to question the ROI of a Computer Science major. The most recent enrollment trend data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center indicates that for the first time in a very long time, the number of Computer Science majors at 4-year colleges and universities declined in 2025. In fact, it decreased a surprisingly large 8% year-over-year to just over 600,000 undergraduates majoring in the computer science field. This compares to a 7% increase in Engineering majors to over 680,000 and an almost 6% increase in Healthcare Services to over 1,000,000 undergraduate majors.
How to Choose a Major in College
As shown above, technology disruptions have and will continue to impact the careers we thought we would have as we declared our college majors.
I think more people should be having this sort of conversation about what education means in the 21st century. While there is no getting around the fact that we all need to earn a living and that our educational backgrounds do–in a very real sense–prepare us for our economic success and social contributions. A purely instrumental view of education can be self-defeating.
New industries and jobs are created and some disappear
When you choose a major, look through the course guides of the potential list of colleges where you are interested in applying. It is important that you have the flexibility to take general courses in areas that provide tools to help you think for yourself and be a multi-disciplinary problem solver.
- For example, does it really make sense to spend a bunch of money to educate oneself to read and interpret X-rays, when much of that work can be outsourced and AI is being trained to improve on human findings?
- Or does it make sense to get a degree in accounting or pursue a career in law? LLMs are being trained on accounting standards and legal precedent so that much of the ‘grunt’ work done by associates can be automated.
- It’s amusing to think that the translation industry used to be a multi-billion dollar field. But, technology has essentially replaced the human worker and so an American with a Masters degree in Chinese language needs to use this knowledge in another industry.
Your education should provide the skills to adapt
The fact is that as we decide upon our major, we have to realize that the economic landscape is going to change. The professional preparation we begin in college is only the start. We have to continue to learn, modulate, and roll with the times. The labor market is going to evolve, and some jobs that pay well today may pay poorly tomorrow. Or vice versa.
So in counseling our clients about their majors, we really try to hone in on the student’s aptitudes and passions: what sort of domains of knowledge to they really enjoy? What interests them? Then I spend time talking about appropriate learning environments. Because college is really about learning–and not merely about acquiring knowledge.
How Should Students Evaluate Whether a Major Aligns with Their Career Interests?
This is the foundational question, and the answer is more nuanced than most families expect. According to the Great College Advice Family Handbook, students should evaluate a potential major across five key dimensions:
- Professional or vocational connectedness: Does the major prepare the student for a particular job or career of interest? For students who are career-oriented—those who wouldn’t attend college if it didn’t lead directly to employment—this dimension is primary.
- Preparation for graduate school: Does the major serve as a prerequisite for advanced study? For example, pursuing a graduate degree in psychology typically requires a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
- General intellectual development: A major is a student’s first attempt at mastering a particular domain of knowledge using the analytical tools of the field. In other words, students learn how to learn—a skill that transfers across every career.
- Personal enjoyment or fulfillment: Some majors don’t line up neatly with particular professions, but they can be deeply rewarding and provide useful background knowledge for a wide range of paths.
- Ease of completion and strong grades: Students headed to graduate programs may want to select a major where they can complete coursework with high marks. Struggling just for the sake of completing a particular major probably doesn’t make sense.
At Great College Advice, the team uses a suite of proprietary assessments to help students and parents clarify these dimensions. As Sarah Farbman, senior admissions consultant, explains:
“We have a ‘Why Go to College’ survey that helps us understand why someone is going to college. Some students are career-oriented—if they couldn’t get a job from the college experience, they wouldn’t go. Others want to broaden their horizons and learn more about themselves. Those are two really different schools.” The team also asks parents to complete the same survey separately, which reveals whether the student and parent are aligned on priorities—or whether there’s a disconnect worth discussing.
Great College Advice’s approach includes five proprietary assessments:
- Why Go to College survey,
- Student Questionnaire,
- Parent Questionnaire,
- Interest Inventory,
- The RIASEC assessment—designed to match a student’s personality and career orientation with appropriate majors and college environments.
Does My Student Need to Choose a Specific Major Before Applying to College?
This is one of the most common questions practical-minded parents ask, and the honest answer is: it depends on both the student and the schools they’re considering.
Some colleges don’t require students to declare a major during the admissions process at all. Most selective liberal arts colleges, for instance, admit students without any regard to major—students declare at the end of their second year. But certain programs within universities can be significantly more selective. The business school at Boston College is generally harder to enter than the College of Arts and Sciences. Engineering schools within larger universities often have more stringent admissions requirements and standards.
Jamie Berger advises families to match their student’s level of certainty about a major with colleges and programs that fit that certainty. If your student has a clear direction, the intended major plays a big role in deciding where to apply. But if your student is undecided—or what the Great College Advice team calls “multi-interested”—it may be best to choose a school that allows for exploration.
Even for the undecided student, however, it is important to identify general areas of interest and competence. This is why we ask our students to do so many different kinds of exercises to discover these preferences and personality traits.
One parent in the Great College Advice community shared a perspective that resonated with many families: when evaluating colleges, don’t forget to compare academic support, mental health resources, career services, and first-year advising. “These matter just as much—sometimes more—than walking the grounds.”
Are Certain Majors Required to Enter Specific Careers, or Can Students Succeed with Any Major?
The reality is more flexible than most people realize.
For certain technical professions—engineering, architecture, accounting, dental hygiene, physical therapy—the choice of major is indeed essential for entering the field. But beyond those, the choice of undergraduate major may have surprisingly little bearing on career competitiveness.
Medical school is the most striking example. While students must complete science prerequisites before applying, their actual major can be in the humanities or social sciences. The MCAT has been redesigned to include knowledge of sociology, psychology, philosophy, economics, and even politics. Some medical schools actively recruit students who have pursued majors outside the sciences because, as the Great College Advice Family Handbook puts it, “being a good doctor is not just about being a good technician: one must also be an ethicist, a psychologist, a communicator, and a good business person.”
Law school accepts students with virtually any undergraduate major—a biology major is just as welcome as a political science major.
Journalism has shifted dramatically. Many editors now prefer to hire journalists with substantive majors in economics, business, foreign languages, or sciences rather than a journalism degree.
Jamie Berger frames this in terms of how rapidly the world changes: “The jobs or professions that are the most lucrative today may not be so tomorrow. Think of the computer programmers trained in the 1980s and 1990s who found their jobs outsourced. Think of the rise of social media and the decline of newspapers.” Today’s graduates will have not only many different jobs in their lifetimes but likely more than one career. This is why Great College Advice emphasizes preferences, personality, and aptitude in choosing a major—not just targeting one narrow field.
Expert Perspective: Consider the job prospects of the architect who speaks Chinese, the doctor who understands economics, the engineer who has a passion for art, and the lawyer who understands psychology. No profession in the 21st century stands in isolation from all other domains of knowledge. — Great College Advice Family Handbook
How Can Parents Calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) for a Particular Major?
For practical-minded parents, ROI is often the driving concern—and understandably so. But calculating return on investment for a particular major is genuinely difficult because so many variables affect a person’s earning potential.
The city where your student chooses to live, the organizations they work for, their personal characteristics, and even life choices like marriage all play significant roles in lifetime earnings. While broad averages suggest that engineers generally earn more than poets, you cannot say that all poets will earn less than all engineers.
Where to start: Payscale.com compiles an annual report on the earnings potential of various majors. This is a useful reference point, but treat it as one data point among many.
What to be cautious about: The Great College Advice team warns parents to be skeptical of press articles that focus on the economic value of certain majors or list “average salaries” of graduates. The methodology of these surveys is notoriously weak and the results more impressionistic than scientific. More importantly, any individual’s experience may not match population-level averages.
The team’s advice is direct: “We believe that parents should consider the higher education investment as an investment in their student, rather than as an investment in a particular university or a particular major.” Focus on what subjects and possible career paths will likely make your student both happy and successful—not just what the national average says.
Jamie Berger has spoken candidly about the ROI of the college admissions process itself, noting that finding the right fit—including the right academic programs and merit aid opportunities—is where the real financial return lies. As he puts it: “In terms of increased merit aid and finding the perfect fit, I think it’s totally worth it.”
Practical Tip: Keep in mind that the major is only one aspect of your student’s higher education. The courses and other experiences outside the major may have decisive impacts on a person’s career trajectory. For some students, it may be more helpful to develop a short list of possible majors based on aptitude and interest than to attempt to pinpoint a specific career path before the end of high school.
What If My Student Has No Idea What to Major In—Should We Be Worried?
First, don’t panic. In retrospect, most of us have been poor predictors of our own career trajectories. Your student is not doomed to career failure if they are completely undecided about a major.
When a high school senior says they have “no idea,” this can often be chalked up to youthful exaggeration. An 18-year-old typically has at least some sense of which subjects are more interesting, which come more easily, and which might be worth exploring further. While it might be initially reassuring if the student could identify a specific major, it may be enough to narrow the possibilities down to a cluster of choices that match their primary interests and aptitudes.
The Great College Advice team recommends a three-step strategy for undecided students:
Step 1: Pick colleges with academic strengths that match the student’s general interests—even if those interests are broad.
Step 2: Make sure the school’s career and academic advising system is well structured to provide continued guidance. Not all advising programs are created equal.
Step 3: Encourage the student to explore classes within their cluster of interests during freshman year. This gives them firsthand understanding of both the content of potential majors and the career avenues that branch out from each discipline.
Chances are you were not certain of what you wanted to be when you grew up. Unfortunately, adults ask young people ‘what do you plan to major in?’ all the time—mostly as a way to start a conversation—and we forget how stressful it can be for young people to provide a definitive answer.
The best advice? Help your teen focus on shorter-term goals instead of thinking about “lifelong goals.” The road ahead will undoubtedly have many twists and turns, so better to make concrete plans in the short term than very vague ones for the long term.
How Does Choosing a Major Affect the College List, and What Happens If My Student Wants to Change Majors Later?
This is where the financial implications of the major decision become most concrete—and where strategic planning pays off.
The ease of changing majors varies enormously by school. Some colleges make switching simple, while others require a formal application, minimum GPA, and even an interview. Switching is generally more difficult at large universities, especially when a student wants to move between different schools within the university—say, from arts and sciences to the business school or engineering program.
The hidden cost of changing majors: Students who switch often discover they lack prerequisites for the new major, which can delay graduation by one to three additional semesters. Each additional semester means more tuition payments—a direct financial hit that can undermine the ROI of the entire degree.
However, smaller private colleges may be more flexible in granting waivers or even allowing a student to create their own interdisciplinary major so they can graduate on time.
The Great College Advice strategy for managing this risk is straightforward: if a student is unsure about which major to choose, or has two or three different areas of interest, select colleges with strengths in all of those potential areas. That way, if the student decides to switch, they won’t need to transfer to another university—saving significant time, money, and disruption.
A member of the Great College Advice community offers a practical perspective on how early career focus should work: when it comes to students interested in professional paths like law, “focus on doing activities that really interest her” rather than prematurely narrowing to pre-professional tracks. The right undergraduate experience builds a foundation—it doesn’t need to look like the career itself.
Which Colleges Offer the Best Career Services and Internship Placement, Especially for Non-STEM Majors?
For non-STEM majors—particularly those in liberal arts who are likely to pursue graduate school—the quality of career services can make or break the post-graduation experience.
Sarah Myers advises families to look beyond whether a college simply has a career center. “Every college is probably going to have a career center, but you need to ask: how many staff are there? What are their hours? Do you have to make appointments or can you just drop by?” She also recommends researching the alumni network: “A lot of times colleges publish information about how many alumni have helped out other graduates from that college.”
Sarah’s personal experience illustrates why this matters. As a psychology major at Colgate University—a small liberal arts college—she was able to spend extensive time with a career advisor who had deep knowledge of the student body and remembered other psychology majors she had previously advised. That personalized guidance led Sarah to an enriching teaching experience in Japan that ultimately shaped her career in counseling.
What to look for in career services:
The Colleges That Change Lives (CTCL) group of colleges are well known for being exceptionally nurturing institutions with strong career support—a good starting point for families prioritizing post-graduation outcomes for liberal arts students.
When building your college list, treat career services as a key criterion alongside academics, campus culture, and cost. Evaluate the school’s schedule too—if your student is at a college that goes later into the summer, they may have fewer opportunities for summer jobs and internships. These details, which often seem minor during the application phase, can significantly impact long-term career success.
Looking for an Admissions Counselor?
Great College Advice is a college admissions consulting firm with six counselors and over 100 combined years of experience. The team provides personalized guidance—including proprietary career and personality assessments, strategic college list development, and “How to Choose a Major” information sessions—to help families make informed decisions about their student’s future. Learn more about our services on a complimentary call.
