Yale is a bit of an outlier among its peers in majors. At Harvard, Princeton and Stanford, computer science is the first or second largest major, and history isn’t in the top 5 anymore.
“Happens in the USA, too. You’ll bump into plenty of history (and other humanities majors) on Wall Street. Ditto in the field of law”
Who went to HYPS. Show me the U of Iowa history majors on Wall Street.
It’s not all on Wall St or even in NYC.
Not sure why this is about Iowa. Or why some assume only tippy top grads can develop marketable skills outside those dang stem majors or finance.
Ironically, sometimes I think posters have a very jaded view of what kids can do, if they pay attention to the right skills and experiences.
Again, it’s not just the major. (One of my young stem grad friends is working at the Y. Alas.)
@lookingforward The Iowa comment had me scratching my head, too.
My kid is working on a joint major that blends history and literature along with computer science. The two areas of study enrich each other and I believe it’s a growing (and positive) trend at many universities to blend CS with a humanities or social science field. While her postgrad employment will be in the CS field, she goes in with a nuanced and rich perspective about the ways computers and coding have developed and changed our world, for good and bad. Where she will ultimately take her study remains to be seen.
If I had to guess, I’d say that there will be more and more of this sort of blending whether from the CS side or from the humanities side. Even the kids who shy away from math and prefer to focus on history or literature will end up having to dip their toes into the world of coding. We’ve already seen it happen with artists and musicians.
Had nothing in particular to do with Iowa. Use any non top tier major public–Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Georgia etc etc etc. Sheesh–think a second.
There are also more majors to pick from that stand alone, but used to be part of the history department. Now schools have majors that would have been in the history department but now combine a few different areas like political science or sociology or English with history. American Studies, Black studies, Women’s studies, etc. My daughter the history major had quite a few classes that were cross listed as art history, religion, architecture, or in ‘the studies’ - black, women’s, Latino. She’s actually getting a ‘museum studies’ minor because of all the cross over.
Absolutely, @3girls3cats. Nothing stops a humanities kid from developing some appropriate stem or business strengths, as well. It used to be my standard advice to take some stem courses, show that thinking and ability, as well.
Lots of kids from those other colleges land well. They get into their regional businesses, corporations or ventures. A good number do the internships, etc. Arizonans get jobs. Even with a humanities major.
@3girls3cats , that sounds awesome. How formalized is that joint major - is it common at your kid’s college?
When you say it’s a growing trend - that reminded me that Cambridge in the UK actually has a whole department of history and philosophy of science. It’s such a fascinating topic imo. Is there anything similar at any of the colleges here?
Why are some posters so willing to make such absolute statements like their are no University of Iowa history majors on Wall Street? That’s a bet I would not take. No UGA history majors on Wall Street? I definitely wouldn’t take that bet as I know for a fact it’s false. Is it harder to land on Wall Street with a history major from non-elite schools? Absolutely. But to say none, well that’s just not a well-reasoned statement.
History, English, and other “life of the mind” programs do provide a good general education. The problem comes in where many jobs require a good general thinking capability but also some very highly specialized technical skills you just don’t get in the life of the mind programs. It isn’t that the history major couldn’t do engineering but some can some can’t. They just don’t have the apptitude for the math involved.
As a former engineering manager I was always looking for the best prepared engineering graduate.bi would screen the applicants for STEM classes to see if they did have the apptitude for the job I was offering. Never looked at life of mind graduates. Some segments of the job market are just getting to technically specialized for a person with a general type degree.
I wasn’t an engineer, but worked for a string of engineering/sales companies, with the engineers, on engineering issues. My D1 wasn’t a CS major, but works in an environment highly dependent on software and its use to customize products to meet needs. I wrote a lot in my career. The engineers couldn’t provide that service. To some extent, apples and oranges.
And some of us aren’t talking about “good general thinking,” but a much higher level of analysis, problem solving, writing and more. Putting together the pieces that engineers don’t.
But so many engineers do have a “life of the mind” approach to so many topics, a curiosity. I hate to see hard lines drawn between what their jobs are versus the personalities.
Wall Street is filled with bright kids from Baruch, CUNY, Stonybrook, Binghamton, Rutgers, Queens College. Publics all. Does it make sense to send a team to recruit in Iowa when you’ve got thousands of kids in your own backyard? And you already know they aren’t going to pushback about living in NY since they live there (or in close proximity) already?
I would be happy to advise a history major from U Iowa how to land a job on Wall Street. But my first advice has nothing to do with landing a job- that kid has to knock the cover off the ball academically. That means writing a senior thesis (or whatever they call it at U Iowa), developing fluency in another language (and extra credit for Mandarin and some knowledge/focus on the history of China), and being an avid student of everything, not just taking classes to tick boxes off a form.
The mechanics of the job hunt are meaningless if a kid has slept his or her way through undergrad. If the kid from Iowa is competing with the history major from Yale who did Directed Studies Freshman year, helped Professor Blight fact-check his new book on Frederick Douglass, and wrote a senior thesis on the impact of the depression on economic policy in the US in the 1940’s and 1950’s…that kid at Iowa needs to bring his or her A game.
But it can be done and HAS been done. And trading floors are still thick with kids from non-elite schools and all sorts of backgrounds. The skillset to be a trader is very different from M&A or private wealth management…
However, at many colleges, general education requirements do not require that much course work in math/statistics or science, so students in humanities and social studies majors could be very lopsided rather than well rounded in terms of general education.
@3SailAway If your kids aren’t writing research papers for history classes they are really being shortchanged. It may not be tested on the AP test, but you are at a real disadvantage in college if you aren’t familiar with the process. (My SIL bombed her first semester at Harvard for just that reason.) I had dates and short IDs as at least parts of exams at Harvard when I took big survey courses. They were never the entire exam, but I got a C+ on my first midterm in one course, because I didn’t realize just how much detail I was expected to memorize.
My kids never did hours of homework for AP History classes - and they both, even the CS guy got 5s on the exams - I think some schools really do a terrible job of teaching them.
In NY there is a two year Global History requirement, so what they did in our school was have selected students do AP World for the second year. They had to do some extra review of the stuff they’d covered freshman year, but it seemed to work out pretty well, though the teacher did not pace the course well, and there were some Saturday catch up sessions in April. (It was the first year he’d taught it.) With the new modern World dates, it would probably work out even better.
DS19 has an avid interest in history (among other things). Unfortunately the structure of his top 2 program choices will only allow him 1-3 electives and so he won’t have room to be able to take many history courses (or much of anything at all outside of his major for that matter). As much as he enjoys history, he never seriously considered majoring in it.
@ucbalumnus I totally agree and all those things would be very useful, especially with the advent of digital humanities. I am completing a degree I started 25 years ago (kind of a weird story) and the only really big difference is how useful math and programming would be in analyzing historical data these days. That kind of thing existed then but the mass quantities of digitized data did not.
@SJ2727 she proposed the joint major to the two departments and they approved it. It involves completing the requirements for both programs and writing a thesis that examines some aspect of computer science, acceptable to the two departments. I don’t think it’s especially common at her school but I don’t think she’s alone either. Stanford introduced a more formal program blending CS with humanities and the arts. I don’t know how widely it’s been adopted.
https://majors.stanford.edu/more-ways-explore/joint-majors-csx
My son started out as mech engineering major at one of the small lacs with engineering. He had intended also to minor in history which would have been hard but possible with Ap credits that started him a little ahead in math etc. instead he realized that he really hated his engineering sequence and missed taking more non Stem classes. He said he had never worked so hard for such poor grades. He wasn’t failing and still had 3.2 gpa or something like that but it was a struggle. So mid way through sophomore year he switched to a history major and decided to finish a math minor. He realized that he loves working with Kids and wants to teach. He will have to get a masters or alternative way to certification but I am thrilled for him. He now loves his classes and made deans list the first semester he switched. The 300 level math courses he is taking now are still a struggle but he is determined to finish the minor.
I guess I am with @TheGreyKing in not viewing college as only about preparing for a specific career but am more interested in my kids getting an education for its own sake. No point in struggling through a pre professional degree so you can be employable in a field you dislike. I recognize this attitude is a luxury for many people. I don’t really care what kind of job he gets after college. He can be an americorps volunteer or a barista or whatever as long as he figures out a way to make ends meet and doesn’t sponge off us indefinitely. He can even live with us for some time if he wants as long as he isn’t sitting on the couch all day. I don’t view any education as a waste even if it’s not put to direct use.
I could have predicted that s wouldn’t care for engineering. Apush was his favorite class in high school followed by Ap gov and a criminology elective he took senior year. He took all the Ap math and science classes (Calc bc, bio, chem, physics c) and passed them all. Got mostly A-and B+ in those classes and 4s on the exams. But I never got the sense that he was terribly interested in the subject matter. He even took a project based engineering class in hs which he enjoyed but mostly because he got to make things and play with cool toys. And he was never particularly interested in computers or learning how to code. He says now that he wishes he would have done something with debate in hs as he finds he loves to argue various points of view in class. I think he felt pressured initially to pick a course of study with an obvious career path in which he could make decent salary.
I was an English major with unofficial minors in French and art history. Went back a couple of years later to get an MA in art history. I have been employed steadily since college. Jobs have ranged from office manager to development assistant to museum education director and other non profit arts education positions. I now work in marketing for A/E/C industry. Current position uses my writing, organizational and strategic thinking skills. I do a bit of light research and have learned some graphic design skills over the years. Not really a linear path but it worked for me.
Ironically, my D who just received a BA in theater with minors in dance and art history (some of the least practical majors around) is actually working in her field (though for very little $$$). Her degree had tuned out to be way more preprofessional than I would have predicted. I’m happy for her to chase her dream as long as she had the grit and determination to do so.
The visual and performing arts majors are actually rather obviously pre-professional – but the career paths in those fields are such that only the most elite practitioners earn a good living (the distribution of incomes for arts people has a very high Gini index). Presumably, she is very frugal with her money in order to live on “very little $$$”.