How to Choose a Major?
I while back, 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 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).
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).
Just consider “communications” or “marketing.” If you had studied these in college fifteen years ago. Who would have foreseen the social networking and marketing tools that we now take for granted?
How to choose a major in the 21st Century
Anyway, I was following my friends on Twitter the other day, when someone else complained about this NPR story. This someone else was Alex Berger. Thus began a conversation about this NPR story that led him to write an extended email describing his take on education in the 21st century. In a separate post, I will reproduce his email in full (with his permission, of course).
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.
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 is being done more cheaply in India?
Or does it make sense to get a degree in accounting? Today, highly trained and able accountants in India are filling out IRS 1040s for US citizens more cheaply than H&R Block?
Translation work might seem lucrative, but in fact, it’s cheaper to pay Chinese people to translate my documents into Chinese than to pay an American with a Masters degree in Chinese language to do the same work.
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.
Read more on this topic with guest blogger, Alex Berger.
Get help if you need it
And if you need help in thinking about how to choose the right major, get in touch with us. The team of counselors at Great College Advice have years of experience guiding students toward their academic and professional goals.
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant
