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<p>Students currently attracted to pre-professional or other majors due to perceived job prospects (as opposed to very strong intellectual interest in the subject) may pause if the job prospects for those majors are not as good as perceived.</p>
<p>For example, how many students and parents believe that all STEM majors have good job prospects, so the student intends to major in biology, or is pushed by the parent to major in biology, even if the student’s strongest intellectual interests are in some H/SS field?</p>
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<p>It is for the two thirds of bachelor’s degree graduates who majored in obviously pre-professional majors. Also, many of the liberal arts graduates chose their majors for pre-professional reasons (e.g. math/statistics/economics for finance jobs, various majors as perceived to be good for pre-med, pre-law, etc.).</p>
<p>The idea that pre-professional preparation and intellectual exploration are necessarily mutually exclusive is an odd one, to say the least.</p>