<p>I’m not disagreeing with pseudo (I agree largely with the assessment) and maybe this is overly idealistic, but selecting any major should not be driven by an assessment of job (industrial) demand. First and foremost, a college major should derive from a personal assessment of one’s interests and aptitudes. Job demand is a constantly shifting target. As an employer, you can tell when an applicant really is interested in pursuing a science career in comparison to someone who completed a degree expecting that the credential would lead to a job. All else being equal the job will go to the one with deep seated interest.</p>
<p>They should change STEM to just TE. Actually, more like TEECEIEPe. the only engineering fields I have seen growth in are petroleum, electrical, civil, and industrial. Chem/materials science engineering was high on the list at one time but is falling now.</p>
<p>Civil engineering, I see negative growth. How much of the nation’s infrastructure is failing and not being fixed or redesigned for the new codes and regulations that are being put into place. PetE and EE, I’ll agree I see growth there. However, if the EPA and those that support it(usually the Progressives, which we formerly knew as the Liberals, which we call the left) get their ways, PetE will decline. Look at the current stalling of the Keystone Pipeline, which would produce a large number of jobs, and those on the left are trying to block it. Anyway, I agree with trying to avoid debt. I’m lucky as I invested in a mutual fund since I was a kid(26 now) and going to a State school, so I’ll end up with no debt. Grad school? No problem. Just be a TA or RA, have the tuition waivered, earn a salary of ~30k, spend what I need, which isn’t much, and put the rest away in investments.Many people do not think this way. I see alot of younger people spending everything they get, and have no room to invest for retirement or kids college fund or whatever. Will everything work out the way I want it to? 99% most likely not, but that’s why people must learn how to adapt to a situation, and seeing as I have overcome many challenging situations in the past, I can comfortably say that if things don’t work out for me in one way, then I would have no problem figuring out an alternative.</p>
<p>You know, I also thought civil would decline, espescially since it has such close ties with architecture, which is falling. However, multiple articles say it is supposed to grow. Honestly, it doesn’t make sense to me either. Maybe these articles are misinformed.</p>
<p>Put it this way, if you want to be employable, ALL science majors need to minor in computer science and learn a programming language (also learn a useful program like R), take statistics and some math classes (theoretical math not so useful, but math like numerical analysis, fourier transforms, etc. is), and possibly learn another useful language.</p>
<p>
Because we would magically end up with the right number of nurses, social workers and accountants if there were no (dis-)incentives to pursue these careers? Or are you saying that our educational system should be changed so that anyone could be trained as a nurse on the job after majoring in Harry-Potter-ology? </p>
<p>I really don’t see the labor market functioning very well if the supply is set independently of the demand.</p>
<p>barium,</p>
<p>I see your point. However, I see selecting a career as a personal, not a social decision. The efficiency of the labor market is not my objective when selecting a career. My objectives include doing something that I like, that is creative, that is consistent with my values, that earns a sufficient income. Some of those objectives compete and there are tradeoffs. But I do not weight my objectives equally. It requires many hours to achieve expertise at many skills - particularly the ones discussed on this forum. Given that level of sacrifice, I put a lot of weight on pursuit of a major/career that I like and that I am truly interested in.</p>
<p>In addition, predicting the labor market is a major source of uncertainty in this decision process.</p>
<p>With an engineering degree you can go on to major in a science field for graduate work if you wish, and you are far more marketable than someone wtih a pure science degree. If you can handle the math there is no reason to not get an engineering degree in my opinion.</p>
<p>Disclosure:</p>
<p>I am an engineer.</p>
<p>I do agree with not being to specialized when choosing majors. One of the main reasons why I chose Math as a major was so that I could have an avenue to different employment areas. I learned that one did not need a full CS degree for software engineering so I “pick and chose” from the CS curriculum. I threw in extra operations research/optimization courses to give me an edge for those jobs. In grad school, my degree reads “M.S. in Engineering”. I have no specialty and within the 10 courses that were required for my degree, I have a 3-course certificate in systems engineering, a 3-course certificate in project management and 3-course specialty in databases & data mining. My “hodge-podge” M.S. in Engineering degree was deliberate.</p>
<p>I completely concur with what BlindWilly said. Seriously, if you are so obsessed with job prospects, you guys should just major in a more “marketable” major (say, economics). People major in science not just to earn money, but because they genuinely enjoy studying it. As long as you major in something that really interests you, there’s no reason why you should be miserable (unless you want to be super-rich). Even if job prospects may be unfavorable, I believe that the joy of doing something you truly enjoy (which comes only once in a lifetime) outweighs the extra money you’d earn from doing something that you don’t enjoy, if not downright dislike. Also, regardless of what you major in, people who enjoy what they do will fare well. It’s usually those who lack motivation for what they do that fall prey to fluctuating industrial demands, without any recourse. Let money follow you, not the other way around.</p>
<p>It isn’t about extra money. Career prospects in science are so bad any money at all is not a guarantee. The unemployment of chemists especially is atrocious. It isn’t about scientists worrying that they won’t be able to afford a yaht or mansion, it is about scientists worrying they will default on their student loans, not be able to afford groceries and housing and not have benefits.</p>
<p>I’d say science has reached the point where a degree in it has a negative return on investment. It is practically career/financial suicide to get one.</p>
<p>People that lack have no motivation, fall prey to fluctation in demand? Tell that to the thousands of bankers that BB IB’s cut last year due to the uncertainty of even stricter regulations that the Dodd-Frank bill is slamming against the financial industry. Tell that to the nurses, x-ray techs, and other healthcare professionals(not all, but several fields) that have been laid off and have a hard time getting work. But despite those fields getting cuts, the biggest cuts are in science, especially in Big Pharma, probably the biggest employers of biology and chemistry. Why are there cuts in the science field? Profit margins just aren’t there anymore, and in order for a company to stay in business, it has to be about the bottom line. Why research a new drug, that takes millions of dollars, only to have its patents expire or not pass FDA’s idiotic regulations? You know how many drugs have been designed to cure illnesses without side effects, yet can’t be sold because they are illegal due to an expired patent? Big pharma makes a better profit with less efficient drugs, as opposed to trying to get a new drug on the market. Science was big in the cold war era, and it’s big in other developing countries. But here, ever since the Cold War ended, or a little bit before then, science has declined. However, in a field like Geolgy, the opportunities are good, especially if you deal with the commodities side. Demand for lithium(for batteries), oil and natural gas deposits, gold, platinum, silver are high. So, if you want to go into any science field, geology should be fine for now, but it is highly cyclical and follows the market very closely. So obviously, you wouldn’t want to go in when the demand for commodities is in a bust cycle.</p>