What major at CAL is most successful at its respective purpose?

[sakky]

<p>

Of course, if any major taken by a football player is a “fluff” major, how does that explain:</p>

<p>1 Mechanical Engineering
1 Molecular Environmental Biology
1 Operations Research and Management Science

</p>

<p>Nobody ever said that every major taken by a football player is a fluff major. The question is, where do they tend to congregate, and you confirmed yourself that the answer is indeed American Studies. So we seem to agree that that is indeed a fluff major. {Would anybody care to argue otherwise?} </p>

<p>

5 African American Studies
7 Business *
3 Integrative Biology
3 Interdisciplinary Studies
4 Political Economy
4 Political Science
6 Social Welfare
10 Sociology

</p>

<p>And like I explained before, these majors need to be scaled for the size of the major. </p>

<p>

Strong post-graduation prospects? American Studies appears to have about a 1:2 ratio of employed : seeking employment in the latest career survey. Legal Studies and Media Studies are better, with about a 2:1 ratio. But none has a particularly good pay level (yes, better than MCB, but that is not saying much).

</p>

<p>Please carefully read what I actually wrote: I said relatively strong post-graduation outcomes. As I explained before repeatedly, the notion at play is efficiency, which can be measured as the post-graduation outcomes relative to the workload involved, and I think nobody would seriously argue that majors such as American Studies, Legal Studies, or Mass Comm are particularly demanding. Obviously engineering/CS majors are the highest paying majors, but they are not particularly efficient after accounting for the workload involved. </p>

<p>

A student not getting substantial non-loan financial aid might not find the upgrade in pay levels for these majors versus some alternative post-secondary activity to be worth the cost of attendance.

</p>

<p>And again, you’ve attempted to change the subject. The question on the table, as stated within the thread title, is what major at Cal is most successful at its respective purpose? The question is not whether you should not even go to Cal (or any other college) at all, as the boundaries of the question necessarily entail that you must pick one of the majors. </p>

<p>Otherwise, you are arguing that the entire point of the thread is moot. You are certainly welcome to argue that point and discuss a tangent but you should then clearly declare that you are no longer subjecting your discussion to the boundaries of the thread. We could then (implicitly) branch off an entirely different subthread to handle the new topic that you eagerly wish to discuss. </p>

<p>And besides, whatever you want to say about the starting pay of American Studies majors, they still made an average of $45k of starting salary in 2010, a whopping figure compared to the average liberal arts graduate from the average school in the nation who made only $33k in 2010. So if you want to argue that the American Studies students might have been better off not even having attended college at all, then you must agree that the vast majority of liberal arts graduates across the country should also not have attended college. So why single out the Berkeley American Studies students? </p>

<p><a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/08/news/economy/college_graduates_starting_salary/[/url]”>http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/08/news/economy/college_graduates_starting_salary/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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Note that American Studies has a senior thesis requirement. If the major is indeed a “fluff” major, that means that you are claiming that the grading standards for such a senior thesis are lax.

</p>

<p>Indeed I am. Would anybody care to argue that the American Studies senior thesis is difficult to pass? {Note, I’m not talking about obtaining a top grade, I am talking about simply passing.} </p>

<p>

Low work majors with significantly better job and career prospects:</p>

<p>Business Administration
Cognitive Science
Economics
Environmental Economics and Policy
Applied Math
Statistics

</p>

<p>I rather doubt that many people would agree that any of these majors - especially Applied Math or Statistics - are “low-work” majors on par with the ‘Studies’ majors. Business Administration is particularly deceptive in that you must account for the risk involved in not being admitted to the major at all - along with the high prereq GPA required (and consequent high work load) necessary to obtain an admittable GPA. What happens to all of the students who took all of the prereqs, applied to Haas but weren’t admitted to the major? Heck, what happens to those students who didn’t even apply to Haas at all because they knew that they wouldn’t get in? {Let’s face it, if you have a 2.5 GPA in your Haas prereqs, you know that you won’t be admitted, so why even apply?} </p>

<p>You’ve argued before that Applied Math (and presumably Statistics or even Economics) are fluff majors to students who are unusually talented in those fields. But by that notion, every major - even the engineering majors - could be considered fluff majors if you restrict the discussion only to those who have the unique talent to excel in them. EECS child prodigies such as Steve Wozniak would and did consider the EECS major to be a fluff major. But how many people have the talent of Woz? Similarly, how many Berkeley students have the quantitative talent that Applied Math or Stats would be a fluff major to them? </p>

<p>What matters is whether a major would be ‘fluffy’ to the great bulk of Berkeley students. Many - almost certainly most - Berkeley students, and especially most football players, would struggle to graduate if forced to take the Applied Math or Stats major. However, surely far fewer would struggle to graduate from American Studies. Again, they might not get top grades, but they would surely pass.</p>

<p>And that’s what I mean by a highly ‘efficient’ major: one that allows you to obtain a degree with relatively little work or major-specific talent yet still provides a post-graduation salary that is substantially higher than that of the average liberal arts graduate across the nation. {In contrast, certain of Berkeley’s engineering majors, notably chemical engineering, earn lower salaries than do their chemical engineering counterparts across the nation. That’s right -lower}</p>

<p><a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/08/news/economy/graduate_salary_pay/index.htm[/url]”>http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/08/news/economy/graduate_salary_pay/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/ChemEngr.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/ChemEngr.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;