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http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...s-a-major-deal/2011/05/23/AF7r459G_story.html
Some food for thought as you consider your college major. Reality is often kind of unpleasant to hear but you should anyway. It's a technical world getting more so every day. Everyone should be well read, and everyone should possess the ability to write clearly and concisely. But this echoes what I have thought for a long time (and what I told my son which he promptly ignored)- your marketability as a liberal arts major is significantly lower now and in the future than if you are an engineer. Sure- you get more rack time in college as a Liberal Arts major than you do as an ME; EE; CE etc... but as the old Fram Oil commercial goes: "you can pay me now or pay me later".
I often times hear people give the advice to major in what you are interested in. True enough but counterbalancing that is that as an 18 year old you don't know that much about your options so what you are interested in is often the product of a fairly narrow life perspective. The other problem with that advice is that it's often a thin cover for sanctioned laziness- "I'm good at reading and writing so it won't be that hard to major in history, while it will be real work with lots of math if I become an engineer".
Lest you think that I am an engineer reinforcing my opinion of myself- I can say all of this because I have both a Bachelor's and Masters in History- which I have had to overcome in my post military career. Bluntly- the only fields which value those degrees is academia and the law and in both cases they only value them as stepping stones to higher degrees. So while there may not be an absolute right and wrong answer to the question of what do I major in- but there are definitely some truths you should consider when making the decision.
Some food for thought as you consider your college major. Reality is often kind of unpleasant to hear but you should anyway. It's a technical world getting more so every day. Everyone should be well read, and everyone should possess the ability to write clearly and concisely. But this echoes what I have thought for a long time (and what I told my son which he promptly ignored)- your marketability as a liberal arts major is significantly lower now and in the future than if you are an engineer. Sure- you get more rack time in college as a Liberal Arts major than you do as an ME; EE; CE etc... but as the old Fram Oil commercial goes: "you can pay me now or pay me later".
I often times hear people give the advice to major in what you are interested in. True enough but counterbalancing that is that as an 18 year old you don't know that much about your options so what you are interested in is often the product of a fairly narrow life perspective. The other problem with that advice is that it's often a thin cover for sanctioned laziness- "I'm good at reading and writing so it won't be that hard to major in history, while it will be real work with lots of math if I become an engineer".
Lest you think that I am an engineer reinforcing my opinion of myself- I can say all of this because I have both a Bachelor's and Masters in History- which I have had to overcome in my post military career. Bluntly- the only fields which value those degrees is academia and the law and in both cases they only value them as stepping stones to higher degrees. So while there may not be an absolute right and wrong answer to the question of what do I major in- but there are definitely some truths you should consider when making the decision.
An old joke in academia gets at the precarious economics of majoring in the humanities.
The scientist asks, “Why does it work?”
The engineer asks, “How does it work?”
The English major asks, “Would you like fries with that?” But exactly what an English major makes in a lifetime has never been clear, and some defenders of the humanities have said that their students are endowed with “critical thinking” and other skills that could enable them to catch up to other students in earnings.
Turns out, on average, they were wrong.
Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who have majored in engineering, computer science or business are as much as 50 percent higher than the earnings of those who major in the humanities, the arts, education and psychology, according to an analysis by researchers at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
Education is so off-the-charts expensive now,” said poet and Florida International University professor Campbell McGrath. who noted that his son is considering an anthropology degree. “You are making a really weird decision if you decide to send your kids off to study philosophy. It would be a better world if we all studied the humanities. But it’s not a good dollars-and-cents decision.”
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