The Most Regretted Majors All Had One Thing In Common

Parents Forum
21

@ucbalumnus I’m thinking longer term. Yes, it’s harder to get good entry level jobs that will lead to bigger things. But over decades, a persons education becomes less relevant than their skills ( except when they change jobs or in certain fields). And English is a strong skill set.

recent recession#$#% Where do you live?? OMG, they are paying $15 to work at any local supermarket. And there are signs for help wanted everywhere . The economy is better than it has been in years. Up and down the food chain.

22

This study strikes me as unreliable.

Interestingly, it could be read as very anti-STEM. English majors 42% regret…but sciences other than Computer Science/Math and Engineering also have a high rate of alleged regret. Sciences 35% does not sound like much of an advertisement for majors in Biology, Chemistry, or Physics.

I know lots of happy, gainfully employed English majors, Biology majors, and Chemistry majors. I think the key in today’s market is to think about what you are going to do with that major prior to spring of your senior year.

Also, I think there is a serious argument to be made for taken full advantage of the college’s career services office rather than going to Ziprecruiter. They can help you figure out jobs that fit your credentials. Most college career centers are willing to help alumni even after they graduate.

23

Short term pressures (e.g. debt) can reduce the priority of long term planning and expectations for many people. Millennials are generally poorer than their parents were at the same age.

Also, someone who goes to college and then gets a grocery store, other common retail, or package delivery job may regret the debt needed to go to college that was not needed for the job.

24

Note that many here and elsewhere assume that STEM = high paid job prospects at graduation, but that is not really true for biology majors (who are very numerous). Also, many may be failed pre-meds who did not think of backup plans until late and wished that they studied something else in hindsight.

25

I was a CS major and regret it. I didn’t when I was younger because I was/am making bank. But my career has never been personally fulfilling and now I regret it.

How can they lump Business and Engineering. Totally different majors, skills set, and salary.

Also-- there’s your undergraduate major, and then there’s graduate school. A BS in Chemistry doesn’t do much for you. A Ph.D. certainly can. Same with Business. You need an MBA-- which you can also get after an English major.

I strongly object to schools/society steering kids too much towards STEM. It doesn’t lead to happiness if it’s wrong for you. And is sends the message that you and your interests are not worthwhile if they aren’t STEM. “Studies” like this are part of the problem.

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26

I actually think that CS grads from state schools do really well, but the young people I know who majored in English and landed lucrative careers, went to Ivies. Not sure if that is significant.

Of course, I do not believe that a lucrative career is the definition of success.

And parents can take heart because some of those humanities majors who work at stores or restaurants when they first graduate, find their niche fairly quickly.

Internships, volunteering and coop type jobs can really help with job prospects.

Working for a non-profit can be a great career too.

27

“How can they lump Business and Engineering. Totally different majors, skills set, and salary.”

They don’t “lump” them into a single category. They are two separate categories that were by coincidence tied at 16% having regretted their choice of major.

28

Exactly. You need to start planning several years ahead. Do internships, take advantage of career workshops, get a LinkedIn profile and start networking, etc.

That said, most arts & sciences departments could do a better job of prepping their graduates for the job market. Undergraduates and PhD students alike frequently graduate with little idea of what sorts of jobs they’re qualified for and how to market themselves.

I’ve taught at two top 25 universities over the last several years, and a disturbingly high number of students - humanities majors included - do not know basic career skills like proper email etiquette. Maybe no one bothered to teach them, or maybe they simply didn’t pay attention. It’s usually something I address early in the term.

29

I’d love to see the full methodology on this. It seems sloppy to me, kind of like a Facebook poll.

@Scipio, They definitely did some lumping together. According to the site they had “18 categories of college majors.”

“Social sciences/law”? I don’t buy that sociology, anthropology, psychology, poll sci, legal studies, and economics majors all regretted their choice at the same rate.

While the sample size (5225) might seem ample, there’s no indication of how many fit into each category of major. This could lead to some seriously skewed data. For instance, using IPEDS data for college graduates by major, if we assume the poll had proportionate samples, only 23 of those sampled would have been architecture majors and only a few more would have been philosophy/religion majors. That number is just too small to yield anything close to statistical validity. If you do the math, literally two more happy architects and all of a sudden architecture would zoom up to the top of the happy list, in a tie with computer science/math for first place. And even that assumes architects are not under-sampled.

-Sue 22, college English major who can still do basic math and pull apart polling data. :slight_smile:

30

Did anyone else notice that Architecture was listed in both the most and least regretted lists?

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First, there is no such thing as “sciences” the fact that the people who did the survey consider “science” to be a field already demonstrates that they don’t know much about much.

Besides, anybody who gets a degree in biological sciences, the life science with the largest number of majors is told, very clearly, that, one needs a masters for any decent job. So the ones you have on Ziprecruiter are those who don’t listen to advice.

Overall, the problem is with Ziprecruiter, not the majors. Ziprecruiter is heavily weighted towards management and tech (look at the default job titles). So of course people with degrees in those fields who are looking for jobs via Ziprecruiter are happy.

On the other hand, when you use “English degree” as a search term on Indeed, you get 1,344 full time jobs, and of these include copywriting, marketing, communications, editing, and dozens more. On ziprecruiter, there are many fewer, and half are Adjunct teaching, while the rest are mostly jobs that require retraining and don’t utilize the English degree at all, like store manager, physical therapist, even babysitter…

If I thought that the only jobs available to me as an English major were the ones offered on Ziprecruiter, I would also be unhappy with my degree.

Ziprecruiter is bad at finding jobs for English majors, so it blames their inability to provide English majors with decent jobs on the major and on the people.

It’s like a steakhouse claiming that they provide good meals for everybody, but only provide standard steakhouse fare, and then they claim that vegetarians aren’t happy at the restaurant because there is very little food exists in the world for vegetarians.

The same is actually true for most of the fields that Ziprecruiter claims are unsatisfied with their majors. These are the majors for which Ziprecruiters has the worst and fewest jobs, and really has little to do with either the jobs available for the major, or the actual attitudes of the people with these degrees who weren’t so clueless as to look for jobs on Ziprecruiter.

So, the main takeaway from the article is that people with degrees in English/Foreign Language, life sciences, natural sciences, education, social science, law, or communications will likely not find decent jobs on Ziprecruiter. And if they use Ziorecruiter heavily enough to be responding to surveys provided by the company, they are likely to be questioning with their life choices.

Main moral - people who majored in English/Foreign Language, life sciences, natural sciences, education, social science, law, or communications should not be searching for jobs on Ziprecruiter.

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@MWolf Aren’t you assuming that those looking for jobs are only using Ziprecruiter? When you’re looking for a job, you cast a wide net and use every job board out there. I wouldn’t assume those in the study aren’t also looking on Indeed, LinkedIn, etc.

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40 years out from college graduation, I have zero regrets that I refused to follow my father’s directive that I major in computer programming. I majored in journalism, initially, then switched to poli sci with minors in English and history. Even now that I know how much beginning CS majors, like my future son-in-law, make at places like Google, I don’t regret not going into that field. I think I would have killed myself if I had to work with computers all day. I became a civil trial attorney and I enjoy every day of my work life, except when the computers to which we are tethered to get our jobs done malfunction.

OTOH, I kind of wish that at least one of my kids would have wanted to go into STEM, but H and I raised very humanities oriented people.

34

Forty years ago thousands of journalism grads could find jobs in their field and law firms had partners for life who serviced clients who also stayed with the same firm forever. The world changes. My great grandfather was a very satisfied buggy-maker, by all accounts.

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I followed the advice given earlier and googled. As has been pointed out, this study was not done by Georgetown.

But this one was…

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/collegeroi/

Now THAT is quite a contentious assertion, no?

36

It’s not like all people are clay from the same quarry. And the wheel or t30 kiln- ivy English profs and cs profs anywhere just create these destiny’s.

The Ivy League student anecdotes we hear do so well, in general, are not because of the school alone. It’s the clay itself. And if placed in other schools these unique people do just as well. Studies have shown this time and time again despite CC circular debates around this issue.

It’s like weekly nfl power rankings. They are more for fan debate than anything meaningful.

Many people regret their careers because work is hard. But they don’t know another career so they guess the other one sounds sweet and more rewarding. It’s fantasy.

My fil is a tenured English prof and he will oft lament that all his h friends made a killing on Wall Street. My Wall Street friends watch him read and write during the summer at his beach cottage and regret their choices.

I also think he would have been a lousy investment person and my friends wouldn’t be able to critically analyze dilbert from Chaucer. We all assume our skill set is applicable to all fields. Until we actually tried it.

It’s human nature folks.

37

True, and in future years it is predicted that many CS jobs will be automated and no longer needed. They’ll put themselves out of work. :slight_smile:

38

I posted this before when I came across it shortly after my mom’s death, but it fits in here too:

Came across a speech my mom wrote for her retirement ceremony. Mom was an instrumental music teacher, first in high school, then in middle school - very loved at her job and did well with various competitions, etc, in her day. We’ve heard from several former students who have fond memories.

The end of the speech?

She graduated from college in 1965.

Thanks, mom, for letting me choose my own path too. And I’ve certainly no regrets letting my lads choose their paths. Money is not everything and mom certainly had enough of it (no debt, etc, and some left over savings to pass around).

Adding to that, I came across my mom’s transcripts and report cards going back to kindergarten. She always did well in math/science, even in college, almost always getting As. She got more Bs an occasional C and even a D plus one E (failing grade) in some of her music classes - yet music was her love. She made a career out of it, traveled the world occasionally doing it (in groups), and enjoyed her life. She could have been a science or math person even back in the 60s. She had the capability and could hold her own around “men” in the workplace, but she did what she loved. To me as with her, that means far more than money. Find your niche. It beats regrets.

When students return to our high school to share stories I only hear about two regrets from graduates in common:

  1. Those who got themselves into too much debt when they didn’t need to

and

  1. Those who underchallenged themselves by the college they chose - often choosing “free” places that really weren’t up to their caliber.

From those who dropped out with regrets, they often majored/minored in “party,” overchallenged themselves, or picked a bad fit (big/small/city/rural/etc).

I don’t hear much about regretting a major. It’s pretty common for kids to change majors when/if they feel it’s not a good fit and at least at our school we start kids looking further down the road at jobs and what it takes to get there beginning in 9th grade going through senior year. Shadowing is a requirement junior year.

39

@OHMomof2

Any such claims by definition has to be based on circumstances 40+ years ago, when private colleges were significantly less costly to attend, but also tended to draw a demographically different set of students. So no guarantee whatsoever that the long-term ROI will hold true 40 years hence. Here’s a table where you can see what average costs for private colleges were in the past, going back to the 1960’s: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp

And as others have already noted, ROI doesn’t equate to career or life satisfaction.

40

Good point @calmom :slight_smile: …and a good reminder that long-term income data has the same inherent weakness.