<p>I wouldn’t consider 4/6 year graduation rates when choosing a college. It could just mean there are a lot of non-traditional students working full time and finishing their degree slowly. I’m on a 5 year plan for my 51 credit master’s degree. I take one class at a time (most terms) while working full time and raising two kids. Does that mean my grad school is less desirable? If so, why?</p>
<p>I have to say that I am concerned about students who try to work and go to school part time at CCs, directionals, and low-level Us and end up racking up $40K in debt by their early 30s but never actually get a BA. I’m concerned about students who are gapped by second- or third-rate private colleges who end up leaving after one or two years with $30K or more in debt.</p>
<p>The answer to this IMNSHO is more excellent vocational certificate programs and fewer pseudo-academic degrees.</p>
<p>I’ll be frank. I don’t think that there needs to be such a thing as a “BA” in, for example, “marketing” or “fashion design.” I’m not saying those things are not worth learning about in a serious way, I’m saying that they should not be 4-year academic degrees.</p>
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<p>I get the sense that a lot of the STEM types don’t really think that these are real jobs with real career paths (and often real money at senior enough levels), or sort of dismiss them all with a wave of their hand as being vague and nebulous and one step above barista. You know - someone who works in public relations isn’t doing “real work” the way the person in the engineering lab is.</p>
<p>Re: #183</p>
<p>What do you have against STEM types? Who in particular is saying that these are not “real jobs with real career paths”?</p>
<p>What is nebulous from the statement is not the types of desirable potential jobs, but the relative success rate of graduates in getting them (or going to graduate school), versus less desirable jobs or unemployment.</p>
<p>The answer to this IMNSHO is more excellent vocational certificate programs and fewer pseudo-academic degrees. AGREE. Agree, again.</p>
<p>But for traditional academics, it’s not the major, it’s the motion. As Mom 3 points out, companies don’t just need science and numbers folks to invent, research, test, perfect, project, calculate taxes, analyze investments. They need people who can take that and make the business run as an entity. Many, many humanities kids fit that need.</p>
<p>We didn’t look at 4/6 grad rates. I looked at freshmen retention rate, as a measure of satisfaction and some academic fit.</p>
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<p>Are you joking? Do you actually read CC?</p>
<p>ucb - I was a math major! And I married a biology major! I have nothing against “STEM types.” But Consolation is 100% right. I have been struck by the presence of STEM people on CC who repeatedly demean humanities, think it’s all “easy” / grade inflated, can’t possibly imagine that they are of value or ever find employment. To be fair, the STEM majors I knew in college were normal, they weren’t like that, but it’s endemic on CC.</p>
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<p>So are people actually making those arguments in this thread, or are they actually just arguing for more information so that students and their parents know better what they are getting into?</p>
<p>Indeed, actual career surveys at the few universities that have them indicate that the most popular STEM major (biology) often has worse job prospects than many social studies majors, contrary to the apparently generally assumed opinion around these forums. When that mistaken opinion is held by tiger parents forcing their kids to major in biology against their desire, that seems to be a deadweight loss all around for the students – studying something that they do not really like, with no improvement in job prospects.</p>
<p>The bill is idiotic.</p>
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<p>I suspect even this statement is a significant distortion of a much-more complex reality. The vast majority of biology majors I have seen entering the working world straight out of college are interested in (and happy to be) working at a menial, underpaid job in a lab because (a) what they are really doing is preparing their medical school applications, and work is secondary, and (b) they believe a lab job will make them more attractive candidates for medical school. Then there’s the question of what happens to the kids who aren’t successful getting in to medical school (or PhD program, or some other professional program) after two or three tries. They are often, understandably, adrift for a while – after all, they have generally spent the previous 6-8 years focused on a particular goal that they are now having to abandon. Yes, there aren’t a lot of jobs in “biology” for such people, and yes, such people represent a high proportion of the bachelor’s degree-holders in biology in the job market for positions other than entry-level ones – but they are not a high proportion of biology majors in general, most of whom are doing something else. (And most of the unlucky group eventually find a place outside biology.)</p>
<p>My point is, in the end, obvious. Career job prospects in biology for bachelor’s degree-holders in biology are poor, but hardly anyone majors in biology expecting to be in that particular labor market for the long term. And they are right – most biology majors have no more than a cup of coffee in that market.</p>
<p>We should distinguish between those who work directly in bio (whether it’s the job or the health field) versus those who do use that education and experience as a springboard to other occupations that like that background and need that angle. </p>
<p>In that respect, the skills humanities can sharpen, alongside the STEM work, can be a benefit.</p>
<p>Let’s nationalize payscale.com and make it a function of the Department of Education (in partnership with the IRS). Then the government can fix the “self-reported data” problem so many CC’ers complain about by requiring every taxpayer to report colleges attended, degree, and major (along with income). Of course, there should be a system of exemptions, credits and deductions to account for all the confounding factors that might influence earnings. </p>
<p>(Don’t worry, TurboTax will make this very easy.)</p>
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<p>However, most biology majors (or anyone else doing premed) do not get into medical school. It would seem that majoring in biology without long term intentions or expectations of being in the biology labor market is a high risk gamble on medical school – and one that does not necessarily have to be taken, since medical schools appear to be indifferent to one’s undergraduate major (humanities and social studies majors who take the premed courses alongside do about as well as, or slightly better than, biology majors in medical school admissions).</p>
<p>Also, if biology were only done by premeds, there should be fewer biology majors than there actually are, since only students who got A grades in introductory chemistry and biology courses would bother continuing on the premed path.</p>
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<p>You’d think this was obvious, JHS, but it’s not. There’s a really linear crowd on here, however, who thinks that sociology::becoming a sociologist is akin to chemical engineering::becoming a chemical engineer.</p>
<p>Many bio majors think there is a viable plan B if they don’t get into med school- and for some of them that’s true. Pharma sales/PR, any of the Allied Health fields, etc.</p>
<p>Which of course is why some of us on this thread are arguing that there is way too much noise in the labor market statistics to make any of the data useful to a prospective college parent. However, for those of you who think that transparency is necessary- you go tell me if bio at Duke, full pay vs. bio at University of New Haven with a presidential scholarship (and let’s posit for a moment that given the incoming student profiles, a student who gets into Duke and gets the Pres at UNH is likely to be at the top of the class among bio majors at UNH but potentially middle of the pack at Duke) is a better bet BASED ON COMPENSATION AMONG GRADS OF UNH VS DUKE. Is there anything new that the comp figures can add to what you already know about Duke? Or about UNH? And do these comp figures help you discern whether your own child can/will get into med school, or get a professional level job majoring in bio from UNH?</p>
<p>Many of us here are arguing (and to no avail so I suggest we pack it up for the weekend) that yes- more data should equal better decisions. Except when it doesn’t. And anyone trying to peer into comp and labor statistics broken out by college/department who expects anything at all predictive in the numbers should take a second look at those numbers.</p>
<p>Or take the presidential scholarship at UNH. It’s 20K a year, only requires a B average to maintain for four years, seems pretty generous.</p>
<p>I just looked at the Penn numbers for the class of 2011. There were 179 some-type-of-Biology majors who responded to the survey (which had an overall 74% response rate). Of these, 77 had jobs, 86 were in graduate school, and 16 were neither. 47 were in an MD (or MD/PhD, or DO) program, 18 in PhD programs (not MD/PhD), 5 in DMD programs, a couple vets, and the rest of the grad students in some type of master’s program (ranging from MEd to MBA). In other words, straight from college graduation, as many kids were getting some sort of related “D” degree as were working, and I would say roughly half (or more) of those working were working in labs with the getting-ready-to-apply-to-med-school sort of jobs. Many of the others were working for financial firms as analysts.</p>
<p>So while you may be right that “most” biology majors do not get into medical school, it looks like an awful lot of them do, at least at this elite sort of level.</p>
<p>JHS- but what does the median compensation numbers tell you?</p>
<p>What’s more important to me is whether the students are happy / satisfied with what they are doing, and not how much money they make * per se *.</p>
<p>Pizza, the proposed bill doesn’t mandate collection of that data. So I’m curious what folks who WANT the bill and the data think they’re going to tease out of the numbers.</p>
<p>I agree with Pizzagirl. Besides, your salary and career prospects are a function of what your aspirations are, your motivation and and willingness to take risks, in the main.</p>