This is making an assumption that these students’ rationale for choosing those majors is financially driven. That is likely true for some of them, but it is also likely true that some have had a long term passion for those fields. I currently have some high school students whom I advise who are seeking business degrees or CS and some of them have been in love with those fields for many years, and actively engaged in them outside of school. It is a genuine interest. I’m sure for others, they are seeking a field to obtain a high income.
It sort of reminds me of people saying that those who attend Ivy League (or similar) type colleges are seeking prestige. Some truly are. But some are seeking fit and end up at a prestigious school. My own kid did attend an Ivy, but had no clue about college rankings, and in fact, when she was narrowing her final list of accepted schools down, she preferred Smith and Tufts over Penn where she had been accepted as a Ben Franklin Scholar and removed Penn from being in the “running.” In the end, the college she attended (Brown) truly fit so many factors she wanted in a college and prestige or ranking wasn’t in the mix of her selection criteria. In her second grad school (she went to two), she chose UC-Berkeley over her acceptance to Stanford as she thought the program was a better fit.
Okay. I fully accept your first two assertions, and I don’t have reputable data to confirm or deny whether that constitutes “some”, “many”, or “most” students.
So I’ll just say, circling back to the OP’s question, some of us answered Yes, some answered No, and 1100+ posts later I seriously doubt that a single one of us has changed our minds.
In the most recent available NCES (pre-COVID), the most popular major among bachelor’s degree recipients was nursing. The top 15 were as follows. I don’t know if we can read much in to students as a whole looking for financial security. Nursing might have good financial security on average, but several of the other listed majors are not associated with good financial security, such as #3 psychology.
Most Common Majors of BA/BS Recipients in United States (pre-COVID)
Nursing (RN)
Business Administration and Management
Psychology
Biology
Accounting
Finance
Marketing
Mechanical Engineering
Political Science
Speech Communication and Rehtoric
English
Computer Science
Criminal Justice
Elementary Education
Sociology
Highly selective colleges with open major enrollment often show a very different major distribution that is more closely correlated with perceived financial security than occurs among US college grads as a whole. As an example, a similar list for Stanford is below.
Most Common Degree Fields at Stanford: IPEDS
1 . Computer Science (by far most popular major, similar size to #2 to #4 combined)
2. Human Biology (usually pre-med)
3. Engineering, General/Other
4. Economics (usually → finance/consulting)
5. Management Science and Engineering
6. Symbolic Systems (usually → tech)
7. Biology (usually pre-med)
7. Science, Technology, and Society (tie)
9. Political Science (usually → law or finance/consulting)
10. Mathematics (tie)
10. Mechanical Engineering (tie)
The Stanford numbers, similar at other HYPSM, offer a pretty compelling argument that financial security is a top priority. Some of those students love computers, some recognize it as a lucrative career.
Ok, I got curious about raw numbers, not just order of popularity. So I found this on the NCES site (latest data available, also pre-Covid).
Business, Engineering, and Computer Science together add up to 29%.
“Postsecondary institutions conferred 2.0 million bachelor’s degrees in 2018–19. More than half (58 percent) were concentrated in six fields of study: business (19 percent, or 390,600 degrees); health professions and related programs (12 percent, or 251,400 degrees); social sciences and history (8 percent, or 160,600 degrees); engineering (6 percent, or 126,700 degrees); biological and biomedical sciences (6 percent, or 121,200 degrees); and psychology (6 percent, or 116,500 degrees). The fields in which the next largest percentages of bachelor’s degrees were conferred in 2018–19 were communication, journalism, and related programs (5 percent, or 92,500 degrees); visual and performing arts (4 percent, or 89,700 degrees); computer and information sciences (4 percent, or 88,600 degrees); and education (4 percent, or 83,900 degrees).”
Sorry if my post gave that impression; I didn’t mean to suggest that you were. I guess I made that comment because some of us tend to get a bit “enthusiastic” about our opinions.
I too have been curious about others’ answers, and why.
The major numbers I listed above are also from NCES. The table at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_318.30.asp?current=yes shows individual majors rather than major grouping. This allows one to distinguish between business vs accounting vs marketing vs … rather than just grouping them all as “business.”
Right, I understand that. As an alternative, I looked at the raw numbers grouped together just to get a sense of whether business majors in general were 20%, 50%, or whatever percentage. I specifically added together the three that I did because of the majors @roycroftmom had mentioned. (I assumed some of the engineering majors included EECS, so lumped them in).
At my college graduation, the most popular major was English. Followed by History. Same school, 35 years later, the top majors were Computer Science, followed by Engineering. Maybe students’ passions changed, or maybe their priorities did.
While I don’t think my mind has been changed exactly (given that I am still satisfied with my parenting style), this conversation has deepened my understanding of other parents’ perspectives. I like that this discussion has added some complexity to my views on the topic.
Just reading others’ posts and taking the time to articulate my own ideas more precisely has pushed me think about why I believe what I believe in a more nuanced way. For the last several days, I have been contemplating the differences between a job, a career, a vocation, and a calling. Some people clearly see their employment as falling into just one of those categories while others see employment as offering a mixture of financial and personal rewards. All very cool to think consider. Or at least I think so!
HYPSM and other highly selective colleges all have different major distribution, but some general patterns are common. If a highly selective private college has open major enrollment, the following majors are likely to be quite common, often the 3 most enrolled major groupings. These are also the top 3 at Stanford, as reported on Stanford’s website rather than IPEDS (IPEDS groups multiple engineering majors in their “other” category).
Computer Science
Economics (with most working in finance/consulting)
Biology Variants (with most pursuing pre-med)
There are also a significant minority who pursue fields that are typically less lucrative, but the most common fields are perceived to be lucrative. As computer science earnings have shot up in recent decades, so has the portion majoring in CS at highly selective colleges. Many have quadrupled their CS enrollment over the past decade. Some specific numbers are below, comparing the most recent IPEDS year to 10 years earlier.
Harvard – 38 CS majors in 2010, 180 CS majors in 2020 (5x increase))
Yale – 16 CS majors in 2010, 101 CS majors in 2020 (6x increase)
Princeton – NA CS majors in 2010, 158 CS majors in 2020 (? increase)
Stanford – 85 CS majors in 2010, 305 CS majors in 2020 (4x increase)
My daughter received offers ranging from the mid 50’s to high 60’s with her BS in biology. With benefits. I stated this earlier- not a high salary, but enough to live with roommates while in your 20’s and figuring it out.
She was set to begin a grad program with a relatively high starting salary, and just changed it up a bit to a career (grad school also needed) more suited to her interests and talents, but with a starting salary that is lower. Still good, but lower.
It’s OK. I want my kids to support themselves according to what they need, and not what somebody else needs. I also want them to be happy with their choices.
I think there is self selection for students who are passionate about CS. I believe they will be targeting schools like MIT, Caltech, SCS (at CMU), Stanford, GA Tech, RIT, and the like.
I am realizing there are really two parts to this question. Whether we made an effort to influence our kids’ decisions. And whether certain degrees/majors/careers are better in terms of pay (and this was expanded to issues of fulfillment).
This thread has certainly made me think, especially since all three of my kids are in transition this year (one finishing BA, one finishing PhD, one changing jobs).
I would say that I participate/participated in discussions about choices but only when initiated by my kids. I think our focus as a family has always been on having enough to live, period.
Time will tell if our kids made good choices and if I should have done more to “suggest.” They have had a lot of challenges not often mentioned on this thread, and right now I am just grateful they are finishing their education.
Here’s hoping for happiness for all the kids of posters on this thread, regardless of ultimate salary!
There are certain disciplines, and certain subfields within some disciplines, besides academia, where one can barely adequately function without going far beyond what a bachelor’s degree can offer. Compared to a bachelor’s degree, pursuing a PhD is even more about the alignment of deep interest and special talent. It’s certainly not about ROI.
It is interesting how that calculation can be somewhat different in the UK where a PhD is only 3 years (or 4 with a masters, after a 3 year undergrad degree), compared to the longer US process.
In retrospect I got a great ROI on my PhD, as I went into a specialist consulting job that pretty much only hired top STEM PhDs and paid nearly double the typical post BA starting salary (the US equivalent would be something like SRI). They gave you huge responsibility very quickly as well, so I progressed much more quickly in my career. And the skills I learned in my PhD (mostly how to write, which I didn’t do at all as an undergrad) were very useful too. I didn’t particularly choose it for ROI but did feel I wasn’t that well equipped for work after my BA.
Some students may be passionate about CS but know that they cannot get into the most selective colleges that you list, or have financial limitations. Like students in other majors, some may be attending a state flagship, commuting to a local state university, or otherwise attending a college within the limits of their finances and college admission credentials.
