<p>The other problem is that the market changes so quickly and often a student may pick something “marketable” that isn’t so marketable when they graduate. I went to college in 2004, near the tail end of the 1990s period of prosperity. Many of my friends majored in finance or business administration with the intention of going to work in financial services on Wall Street. Nobody anticipated the bank crashes and collapse of the housing market which happened shortly after I graduated. A lot of my friends weren’t able to find jobs for 6-12 months+ after they graduated.</p>
<p>Now the hot field seems to be statistics…which just happens to be where I concentrated a lot of my efforts in college (I was a psychology major, but I had a particular interest in statistics). Data mining and being able to use statistical programs are in high demand now. I only developed those skills because I was interested in psychological research and you need them there, and I happen to really like applied math; I had no idea they were going to be “hot” now that so many firms have found ways to get data from their consumers.</p>
<p>Maybe in a few years the hot skill in demand will be French language skills because the French economy booms and they buy half of Europe. Or remember how China and India exploded and suddenly Chinese was a huge language to know? Maybe next time it will be Portuguese (Brazil), or maybe the Latin American market will blow up (Spanish). The potential reunification of Korea may make Korean language skills even more important.</p>
<p>So it’s kind of difficult and sometimes pointless to select something only because it’s marketable, because we have no idea how the world is going to change even in just the 4-5 years we spend earning a degree. I think a student should pick something that they like and then think about ways that degree could be practical. For example, I was a psychology major and people harsh on psych majors all the time. However, business people like psychology majors - we learn about organizational behavior, why people make the decisions they do (which could translate into "why people buy our stuff, and how to get them to do that more), we learn how to write and present information in front of large groups, and we learn data analysis skills. You can translate those skills into a job IF you recognize that they are there and learn how to write about them.</p>
<p>However, if a student has thought really really hard AND visited career services and still can’t think of a way a certain major can get them where they want to go…well, then perhaps they shouldn’t choose that. Also it’s still true that there are certain jobs that require a certain amount of background knowledge. If you want to create software for Apple, you should probably do computer science, lol.</p>