My two daughters are juniors now and will be starting college in 2020. One plans to study Biomedical Engineering, another - finance. Both fields are completely different from mine or my wife’s or any of our relative’s or friend’s.
I am trying to evaluate job prospects for these majors in 6+ years years after they graduate: earning potential, where the jobs are and are projected to be, if bachelor degree is sufficient to get a job and other factors that determine career prospects.
I did general research and find data conflicting. Some data shows that job growth is moderate, some say BME is a general field that needs other specialized skills such as CS to get meaningful job, some say it is a great low stress job, etc.
Colleges that we visited so far could not provide any useful info: employment data by major, where graduates work, earning after few years. They only have aggregated general data which is useless.
How and where can I get reliable information about field and job prospects? I am really worried about potential career trap. I know people who went to great colleges to study what seems to be a great major only to find out after graduation there are no jobs in this filed.
Some schools provide employment and career data by major, and the outcomes of the graduates, i.e., where they work, what graduate schools they attend, etc. My alma mater for example, Stevens Institute of Technology, provides this information in detail:
If you look at the websites of schools, many provide this type of career placement and outcome statistics. This is probably a better source - and less time consuming - than gathering this information during in-person college visits.
Best to your daughters. Biomedical engineering for example is a rapidly growing field, the advances being made today in medical devices and processes - which are pioneered by biomedical engineers - are making for a solid career outlook in the field.
My nephew has a PhD in BME from MIT. He was very stressed while getting the PhD and while trying to decide what to do next. He’s doing something with a startup working on military related stuff.
How did you daughter decide on BME as her major ? From my unscientific review, there aren’t as many job prospects with an undergrad BME compared to CS or ECE. Many BME undergrads choose to go premed route or PhD.
One other thing to note is that NACE surveys indicate that about 70% of employers hiring college students or graduates use GPA as a screening criterion, and about 60% of those use a 3.0 cutoff.
So the ability to get interviews may be significantly better for a student with a 3.01 GPA than for one with a 2.99 GPA.
When putting GPA on resumes or job applications, use the GPA that is exactly as listed on college records and transcripts (however, students still in school should note “as of [most recent term completed]”), so that there will be no question when the employer looks to verify it.
She has expressed interest in biomedical engineering in last few years, She is taking AP bio and Chemistry. It is her decision we support her but does not influence her decision. She is considering Georgia Tech, MIT, Johnes Hopkins, U-Penn. She absolutely does not want to be a doctor.
The same applies to our other daughter who wants to study finance.
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How did you daughter decide on BME as her major ? From my unscientific review, there aren’t as many job prospects with an undergrad BME compared to CS or ECE. Many BME undergrads choose to go premed route or PhD.
I will stick my neck out here. There are potential jobs that will be available six years from now that don’t even exist now…at all. And there are jobs now that will become less favorable.
Six years is a long plan ahead time. Your students might not even stick with those majors. Many kids don’t stick with what they start off with.
Old CC saga…my one kid was a bioengineering major in college. She will NEVER be an engineer…she completed the degree but made the decision engineering wasn’t for her. So…even IF your one daughter gets this degree, there is no guarantee she will work in this field.
This ^^^^^. Roughly 35% of all undergrads will change their majors. I was an engineering major for 3 semesters because I always did well in math and science. But during that 3rd semester. I realized I hated what I was doing so I changed my major and graduated with a liberal arts degree. From there, I pivoted again and wound up in finance. Go figure.
As a junior in high school, my son was leaning (very slight lean) towards physics; senior year he was thinking environmental science; freshman year at a liberal arts college he took a geology course (for the ES major) and ended up declaring his major in geology (with a minor in studio art); sophomore year in college, he took chemistry (for the geol major), and switched to majoring in studio art and minoring in geology… that’s what he’s studying academically, but I think maybe what he is really “majoring” in is ultimate frisbee and (outdoor) leadership … Right now in his junior year in college, he is looking for a “graphic design” internship for this summer.
I know that for myself, what I was thinking about as a junior in high school for a college major and career is not at all where I ended up…
That 1/3 of major changes tracks the number of students who declare a major and then change. When you look at statistics that include students expressing an area of interest and switching before the initial declaration of a major (some colleges do not allow incoming students to declare a major), the percentage is much, much higher, as high as 80% (in my own house’s small sample, it’s 100%). If it you enjoy doing it, go for it, but all your efforts may be premature or for naught.
I think it is a great idea to engage in this research. Like job shadowing, learning more about the specifics of any career and the prospects thereof can be very useful to young adults choosing a path.
I agree with Thumper1. Don’t think just of one job or a specific career line when choosing colleges. Think more in terms of skill-sets. The job MARKET EVOLVES, and the marketability and remuneration for skills also changes. But having the general credential of a college degree, and major, is still critical.
My own kids got excellent undergraduate educations, but one of them has had several career switches since graduation – all of which, however, draw on his CORE SKILLS AND INTERESTS (including applied math and statistics). He could have gone to law school, or earned a PhD, or earned an MBA. Instead he created his own career and has done well (with just a BA degree in economics).
The other kid has gone from BFA (industrial design) to MBA (as well as an MS in sustainable systems), and her career has ranged from assisting in the design of tableware to advocating (and writing) for ecological design, to administering a program that incubates startups. She also teaches graduate courses on sustainable design as an adjunct in art schools.
Hiring in finance is cyclical and if you could predict the business cycle 6 years from now, there are lots of more lucrative things to do than hang out on CC!
Encourage them to follow their talents and interests without regard to specific career paths. A broad-based education with some depth in one area (not necessarily related to career) combined with the flexibility that allows following opportunities as they come up, tends to work out in the long run better than overplanning for the short term.
Disregarding the short term job and career prospects at graduation is probably a luxury for students who have wealthy supportive parents who are willing to support them at home through an extended job search, or low income first jobs or unpaid internships. Or if the students have well connected parents whose connections give them an inside track to good jobs at graduation.
^Of course, but trying to predict the future isn’t really going to help someone figure out their career prospects at graduation.
It’s not really possible to evaluate one’s job prospects in the future solely on the basis of one’s major, since 1) as others mentioned many jobs that current college students will be working 6-10 years from now probably don’t exist right now; and, more importantly, 2) jobs are filled on the basis of skills and potential and not solely major. I work at a technology company, and while we sure do have a lot of computer science majors, we have a LOT of majors in other fields, too.
The other question I have - more rhetorical and not directed at anyone here - is holy heck, if an engineering degree and a finance degree are shaky prospects in this year of our lord 2019, what can a kid major in without being accused of majoring in something ‘worthless’? Not everyone wants to study computer science. Which is good for society, since we need people to do other things besides build software, and practically speaking if we all switch to CS salaries in that field will collapse and in 10 years people will be telling kids not to major in CS (just like in 2004 when I started college, law school and real estate seemed like great ideas!)
I have never understood this logic. Why do so many on this board assume that education-for-education’s-sake is a luxury for the wealthy because well-off parents will financially support their mis-educated=un/underemployable adult children and all others must consider financial ROI? This is the thinking that has turned college into vocational school. We raised our son to understand that the value of education is in the deep enrichment of his mind and that he should study whatever interested him and base his life’s work on where his heart landed as that’s where he’d have the best chance for fulfillment. Financial prospects never entered into this discussion. The only ROI we looked for was his intellectual curiosity – and we told kiddo that college would be our last financial gift to him. He’d be on his own to make his way in the world the same as we were. That’s how he’d become an adult. We weren’t really worried that he’d live in a box under the freeway but, if he did, that would be part of his journey, not ours. He should have no expectation of financial rescue from us in his post-college adulthood.
This. We feel that a broad-based (and, dare I say it, “liberal arts”) education unfocused on job training, salary potential, or any other metric not related to simply producing a well-educated, intellectually curious individual misses the entire point of that education. This does not seem to be a popular or commonly-shared opinion here, but I think it’s important to include in this conversation.
If attending college were not associated with improved career prospects, it is likely that many who go to college now would not go to college due to the cost and time involved. Yes, education for education’s sake is desirable, but is it $80,000-$140,000 (in-state public) or $280,000 (high end private) more desirable, such that a typical middle income family (not the forum “middle class” who does not get any college financial aid) will be willing to pay that (even if discounted somewhat with financial aid)?
Yet he did choose a school whose curriculum includes pre-professional education that leads to a well defined career path, right?
Note that even those who choose liberal arts majors at not-pre-professionally-focused colleges may still be looking at pre-professional goals:
Economics: substitute business major
Math or statistics: aiming for quantitative finance
Biology: convenient for pre-med
Political science, English: popular pre-law majors for some reason
English, history, math, etc.: preparation for high school teaching in that subject
At the most selective private colleges, the college's prestige itself is an inside track to desired jobs.