<p>Ranking colleges barely makes sense, but at least there is some core of common experience across all students at a particular college at a particular time that isn’t captured by what, exactly, they study. My wife and I attended the same college at the same time. We had very different interests – I didn’t take a single course in either of her major departments, nor did she take any courses in my major department. We did have three courses in common, in different years, and participated in different halves of the same internship program in different years. Our friendship-circle overlap consisted of one person before we became friends. But there is no question, none, that we had huge commonality of experience, that there were strong qualities to the institution that applied in exactly the same way to our very separate paths through it. My kids were at the same college, too (a different one than mine). They have had one course overlap, with different teachers, and slightly more friends-in-common social overlap, but again a huge range of consistent experience.</p>
<p>There is nothing like that commonality of experience within a particular major across the whole spectrum of institutions that offer it. You can generalize appropriately about a college across all its majors, but I don’t think you can generalize appropriately about a major across all its colleges. What’s more, in most American colleges your major represents only about a third of the courses you take, sometimes even less. So, while a major is important to one’s education, looking only at the major means that you are ignoring a whole bunch of relevant information. </p>
<p>Finally, majors don’t mean that much. Some majors – not that many – may actually qualify graduates for a particular job or set of jobs. (I’m thinking about engineering or accounting majors.) Most majors don’t do that, and the careers of graduates will be completely shaped by post-bac training, whether formal or on-the-job. My sister, for example, was a Spanish major, and grew up to be an extremely successful mutual fund manager, without attending another day of school. One of my college roommates was an Art History major before getting an MBA, and he could probably buy a small country if he wanted. I promise you that, to the extent it was dependent on their education at all, and not just their innate qualities, their careers much more reflect their colleges than their majors.</p>
<p>This is probably an over-elitist view. No one would tell high school students to go study Spanish Literature or Art History in order to become millionaires. However, if I were talking to freshmen at my alma mater or my sister’s, I sure wouldn’t tell them NOT to study Spanish Literature or Art History, because majors like that would not close off any important avenues for them, and would give them the tools they needed to start along the millionaire career-path if that’s the way they wanted to go.</p>