I sympathize with your complaint. I won’t engage in any off-topic discussions.
Amen. There are thousands of other companies in the US to work for. It’s not just Blackrock, Goldman Sachs, Facebook/Meta, Google, Amazon.
A college grad can still live a happy and successful life and NEVER work for one of those places. Everybody who hyperfocuses on that small set of companies needs to take a chill pill. If your kid doesn’t work for 1 of those places, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to be a failure in life.
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Those from prep school were probably from upper middle class and therefore better educated AND brighter.
@neela1, I have a close relative who is a partner at a top 3 Vault law firm. Profits per partner are higher every single year and every class of new associates have increased as well. Law firms are generally hierarchical.
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When I attended an Ivy back in the dark ages, I found the prep school kids were, on average, definitely better educated, especially in the humanities. However, the public school kids who were largely upper-middle and middle class were, on average, significantly brighter
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Those from prep school were probably from upper middle class and therefore better educated AND brighter.
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Not sure what you are saying here. In my experience, back in the dark ages when I went to school, the kids from the prep schools were upper class and better educated but definitely not brighter. The kids from the public schools were brighter, on average.
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A small minority of people can and will succeed regardless what they major in college. An even smaller minority of people can succeed even without a college degree. Most students, however, aren’t in those categories.
Most companies hire all sorts of people with different skills. Even the most technical firms need some people with other non-technical skills. The real question is whether there are enough of those non-technical and financially rewarding positions for those who aren’t naturally talented in people skills, etc. that aren’t related to college majors.
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It’s usually because the discussion turns into one about ROI and whether you should spend “tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars getting a humanities degree” as opposed to only being willing to spend that much on a STEM degree.
As an overall average, the pay (and therefore the ROI) for a humanities degree is lower compared to STEM. But that doesn’t mean that the pay of the top 10% or 1% or 0.1% of students will necessarily be lower. It’s not like (say) nursing or elementary education, where the maximum you can earn is limited. At the other end of the scale you have degrees in music/acting/film where most will not earn much but a very few will earn a huge amount.
Returning to the original article, it mentioned students feeling that they need a major that has a clear path to an (average) well paying job. I’m interested why students even at top colleges feel the need to be risk averse and don’t believe in themselves enough to think they will be in the top 1% or 0.1% that can earn a lot with a humanities degree. Have many of the most able kids lost their desire to take the risk on an all or nothing career? That doesn’t seem to be the case in say sports, where plenty still gamble that they will be the next Tom Brady. But there are articles out there discussing how Gen Z is supposedly more risk averse than prior generations.
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My (English major) D "kicked A** in the quantitative classes in B school. So much so that several of the guys (it was mostly guys) who were concentrating in Finance suggested she follow suit. She also was in the top 10 GPA wise (recognized at graduation) in her program. Clearly not an issue for her.
As a marketing manager she now does a LOT of quantitative analysis.
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From my personal Ivy experience, I did not see noticeable difference. But I didn’t ask everyone whether they went to private or public.
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Yep, @FallGirl. Some did great. Glad she did. But there was a real cluster of those folks who had difficulty.
My sense is that there has been a real change over time in the composition of prep school classes. In my era, the prep schools were old money. (J. Burnsworth Cummins IV, know as Burns or Burnsy). Now I think the demographic has shifted substantially:
Here is from the description of the 2017 commencement from Phillips Andover:
"Jewish Chaplain Rabbi Michael Swartz provided the opening invocation, which was followed by a moving rendition of “America” performed by the Academy Brass Ensemble. Thomas Hodgson, instructor of philosophy who retires this year, led the initiation ceremony of the Cum Laude Society.
Head of School John Palfrey announced the five major prizes awarded to outstanding members of the graduating class:
- Nadha Illikkal – Non Sibi Award – to the student who has honored Phillips Academy’s non sibi (not-for-self) tradition through their efforts on behalf of others
- Alexa Tsay – Yale Bowl – to the member of the senior class who has attained the highest proficiency in scholarship and athletics
- Siye “Annie” Zhu – Faculty Prize – for outstanding scholarship during the senior year
- Madison Pettaway – Madame Sarah Abbot Award – to a young woman for strong character, leadership and outstanding scholarship
- Abdelaziz “Zizo” Bahnasy – Aurelian Honor Society Award – for sterling character, high scholarship and forceful leadership"
Very different student body these days.
Admissions criteria were probably different as well.
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They are very different now.
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Of course kids are risk averse. That is how they got into top colleges to begin with-despite their protestations, Ivies screen for risk aversion by admitting very few who have made a mistake. Moreover, in this day of social media, any mistake can haunt them for the rest of their lives. Who wouldnt be risk averse?
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Yes, I agree the student body is very different nowadays. My husband’s family is very old money from NY and almost all his relatives went to prep schools including both Andover and Exeter. If I were more judgemental based on his friends and relatives, I would say the brighter bulbs went to Exeter rather than Andover. Almost all went to Ivies and the top liberals, Williams, Amherst etc. but I wouldn’t say they all would have been admitted under the present criteria. My husband still attends his prep school reunions regularly and a lot of the friends from that period all have significant achievements.
But that wasn’t the case in the past. Historically Harvard Mountaineering Club was one of the most ambitious climbing groups in the country, for example David Roberts’ autobiography is a good read: “By the time he was twenty-two, Roberts had already been involved in three fatal mountain climbing accidents and had escaped death himself by the sheerest of luck. And yet, as he acknowledges, few things have brought him more joy than climbing.” (The first of these fatal accidents was in high school!)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ridge-Between-Life-Death-Rexamined/dp/0743255194
It wasn’t that different when I was in college (albeit in a system that prized success in high stakes exams and particularly in humanities gave the highest marks to those writing “risky” essays). I knew of two people who died climbing and took plenty of risks myself (including going on expeditions to unexplored mountain ranges both above and below ground).
It makes me wonder what we are missing out on. I wonder if Harvard would admit Tom Lehrer nowadays?
Thus, excellent sheep.
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I don’t think it requires being in the top 1% or .01% of people with a humanities degree to achieve career success (however one might define that).
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It’s difficult to generalize all of hiring with a simple one sentence rule. I work in engineering. In my field, it’s common to use major for a simple filter about having the desired tech skills, including having job listings that state a specific major is required. They want to hire someone who learned about engineering by taking numerous engineering classes during college, rather than teach someone without a tech background how to do basic engineering on the job. There are of course other jobs that depend less on major-related skills learned in college and hire from a wider range of majors.
As an example, in the survey at https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf , hundreds of employers rated the following criteria from most to least important for evaluating resumes
of new grads for hiring purposes.
- Internships – 23
- Employment During College – 21
- College Major – 13
- Volunteer Experience – 12
- Extracurricular Activities – 10
- Relevance of Coursework – 8
- College GPA – 8
- College Reputation – 5
When asked what majors they prefer, as one would expect the answers varied by industry. Among science/tech employers, they mentioned preferring CS, engineering, accounting, business, and similar vocationally focused majors on average. No humanities majors did well. Among media/communications employers, favored majors were more varied. Marketing, managing, and business were the top 3, but English ranked among the top 10.
If you look at average/median earlier career employment from nearly any college, tech majors tend to have higher earnings than average, and humanities majors often have lower than average early career earnings. This includes “elite” colleges. Continuing with the Harvard example, College Scorecard reports the following early career (I believe they are using 3 years out now, for students who are employed and pursue no further degrees) tax reported earnings for Harvard grads by major among students in federal database (mostly Pell/loan). There is a large variation in median earnings by major, with the same type of pattern as other colleges. There are certainly some English majors with 6 figure earlier career earnings, but they are in the minority. In contrast, in other fields, 6 figure earnings are the norm, and those majors tend to be more popular among Harvard students.
Median Tax Reported Earnings by Major: 3 Years After Harvard (CollegeScorecard)
Computer Science – $163k
Mathematics – $122k
Economics – $100k
…
Biology – $45k
English – $44k
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That’s not my point. I’m saying the distribution of outcomes (at least in salary terms) is different (wider) for humanities majors. So how much of the decline in the number of humanities majors is down to students becoming more risk averse?
The interesting thing about this thread, 150 posts in, is the tl;dr is probably an argument in favor of most universities holding on to their distribution requirements. Best of both worlds…
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I don’t know if any monkey could learn finance, but sales skills are of great value, and not just for people in that function. Any entrepreneur who asked for money, recruited high-value employees into a new venture, or convinced other firms to partner with them needed sales skills.