
Myths About Choosing a College Major - denzil_correa
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/choosing-a-college-major.html
======
baron816
RE: Myth 2. The theory I’ve heard is that women choose those lower paying
fields because they want the flexibility those field offer as that makes child
rearing easier. More government support for child care and longer school hours
would therefore make it possible for more women to go into more demanding and
higher paying fields.

I also suspect that many men choose higher paying and “harder” fields because
they’re expecting that it will make them more desirable to women. Women don’t
feel that same pressure. In other words, rich men are more willing to marry a
teacher or social worker. Rich women, not so much—they want to marry someone
even richer.

~~~
jessewmc
Just as a tangent, the term for this is 'hypergamy' and one can find more
research and writing on it searching for that.

~~~
komali2
The term "hypergamy" has been almost entirely co-oped by redpillers, in my
experience.

~~~
tfmatt
Redpillers? What is this? English is not my first language. Thank you

~~~
komali2
Redpillers are a group of people that have associated around the concept of
"redpill."

"Redpill" has come to mean many things on the internet, but all trace their
origin to the movie The Matrix, in which the character Morpheus offers the
character Neo two pills: one red, one blue. If neo takes the red pill, he will
be pulled out of the Matrix (a computer simulation) and showed the real world.
If he takes the blue pill, he will continue to exist in the computer
simulation and can pretend it's the real world.

In the case I was referring to (redpillers using "hypergamy"), "redpill" or
"to be redpilled" means to believe that male/female dynamics are entirely sex-
driven regardless of context (professional, sports, relationship, etc) and
furthermore those dynamics are governed by rules established early in human
evolution - for example, they believe women will only want to be in a sexual
relationship with strong men that can provide for them, or that women
universally prefer to work as little as possible while being provided for by
men.

A redpiller himself would probably take a mildly different definition than
this - they would try to sell the community on its less politically incorrect
values, such as the tenant that men should focus on self-improvement, bodily
health, careers, etc. However, this is typical cult behavior, and the darker
parts of redpill are what truly drive the community.

~~~
tfmatt
thank you!

------
tn_
|Myth 5: It’s important to choose a major early.

I mean, I think it's good that Georgia / Arizona State have created "meta-
majors" to give students more exposition on specific majors.. but I wish high-
schools would provide that information before students sign up for a 20k-40k+
/ year experiment to find out they don't want to become w/e it is they
originally signed up for..

When I was a sophomore in high-school, a teacher went out of her way, tapped
into her network and helped me land my first professional programming gig. I
was still probably going to be a programmer as I had been coding for 5+ years
already, but being exposed to that environment helped re-affirm that it was
the path that I wanted to take.

~~~
liveoneggs
I also had a clear path thanks to some volunteer work I lucked into around age
15 mixed with my own computer obsession, but most kids don't have that.

I don't see how you could do it outside of the usual "XYZ after school club".

~~~
fma
When I was in high school, I had summers off. I volunteered at the "Main
library" of my county...a huge library and volunteered in their computer lab.
I also volunteered at the local science museum and continued to do so on
weekends during school. I have to travel to downtown, which required me to
take a public bus.

For graduation, we are required some volunteer hours. If we do more hours, we
get special recognition.

Volunteering is a great way to get some exposure to different careers and
areas...There are a lot of opportunities of people just want to look.

------
carlob
Coming from a European country, I really have a hard time understanding this
no-major thing. As a matter of fact I even have trouble understanding majors
at all. Across the pond, when you go to university to study X you study X (and
if X requires Y as a prerequisite also Y). Nobody prevents you from walking
into a lecture hall in comparative linguistics if you are studying biology,
you just won't get any credits for it. Experiencing a large range of topics,
helping you understand what you want to do, and teaching you to think is
supposed to be the role of high school around here.

~~~
projectileboy
The goal of a liberal arts education (which is not unique to the United
States) is to provide a well-rounded base of knowledge combined with critical
thinking skills. For college students on this track, specifying a major
becomes less important.

~~~
hawkice
Can you graduate without a major? It never even occurred to me to try or ask
anyone about it.

~~~
rankam
Some schools have an interdisciplinary degree which is close, I think. If I
recall, you essentially have an advisor that oversees the classes you take and
makes sure that you have "enough" credits in each subject (STEM, literature,
humanities, etc) but you don't have to declare that X subject will be the
focus of my studies.

------
kpwagner
"The top quarter of earners who majored in English make more over their
lifetimes than the bottom quarter of chemical engineers."

This is an important statement. Success in a field is as important as the
field itself. Those who lack the IQ or personality for an area of study and
subsequent employment will find their life harder than it needs to be. My
philosophy: there is value in being in the top ten percent--not that I've
always lived by those words.

While the earnings chart is very compelling. I'm a little confused by the
labelling. Why are the high and low end of the horizontal bars set to the 10th
and 90th percentile? Does this mean the data point used as the high on the
chart is the average (or median) of the sample of earners in the 90th
percentile?

~~~
kemitche
90th percentile is probably used so that outliers (Bill Gates) don't overly
skew the bar charts.

I don't understand your final question though. 90th percentile means that, for
the data set, 90 percent earned less and 10 percent earned more. The end of
the bar is the 90th percentile mark.

~~~
kpwagner
Ah, okay. That kind of makes sense. If that is true, then the writer's comment
about quartiles is wrong--or at least misleading. The outliers thing came to
my mind too; it's such a big factor.

------
Dirlewanger
>Dr. Carnevale wouldn’t speculate as to why women make their choices.

I'll help him out. Go watch a Norwegian documentary called Hjernevask
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask)).
A comedian wonders aloud why, in the most gender-equal country in the world,
women still prefer lower-paying jobs. Its success led Norway to shut down its
Gender Studies Institute.

Not everything is the cause of rampant misogyny.

~~~
SilasX
I would think that it's, at least, _less_ of a mystery in Norway (or the
Western Europe/Nordic model in general) -- at high marginal rates of taxation,
and a wide variety of public benefits for free, there's less of an upside to
making more money, so the enjoyment of the work itself matters more.

~~~
likelynew
The comparison is between two genders in the same country, and not two
different countries.

~~~
SilasX
"in the most gender-equal country in the world" is inviting a comparison
across countries, and the point is relevant regardless.

------
emodendroket
I'm really tired of hearing moralizing about people picking the wrong college
major. Unless you have a crystal ball and can see four years into the future
you're better off just studying something you care about; you've got a whole
lifetime to do stuff you don't really want to do.

~~~
komali2
The problem is some kids get one shot at college, via scholarship or
otherwise, and some universities (including mine) have no barrier to entry to
a given college (say engineering) if you declare it your major on entry, but
have extraordinary transfer requirements.

~~~
pc86
That whole system sounds ridiculous. If I'm paying five or six figures to
attend a university I should be able to register for whatever class I want and
change my major at any time.

~~~
komali2
Well I don't disagree, but at a state school with 40,000 in the undergrad
class I guess they need barriers.

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zelos
How come Chemical Engineering is right up the top of earnings? As someone who
dropped out of chemical engineering to be a software developer, I clearly made
the wrong choice ;-)

~~~
projectileboy
In those sorts of charts, chemical engineering typically includes petroleum
engineering, which can be pretty lucrative.

~~~
komali2
I have a weirdly specific insight into this.

I was an oil and gas recruiter in Houston between 2014-2015... _right_ on the
cusp of the most recent O&G price crisis. So I graduate, watch all my
engineering friends get nice fat 90k/year or even higher salaries (this is
Houston equiv to ~120-130 Bay Area), start buying big trucks, big houses,
spending like crazy. My candidates start doing the same, except for the oldest
and most experienced, who would always warn about valleys in the field.

Lo and behold in 2014 gas prices plummets from something like 100$/barrel to
40, and suddenly almost every single one of my Chem E buddies is out of a job,
and all my candidates are getting laid off, and I myself am busting my ass to
keep employed because now we have maybe 2-3 jobs popping a month that get
instantly targeted by every recruitment firm in the city, let alone thousands
of unemployed candidates.

Anyway, one of my chem E buddies that was _really_ good at saving money fucks
off to SF to do Hack Reactor and has a great time of it. One by one more of my
friends do similar, either doing a bootcamp or just jumping straight into
automation type jobs. One of them even swapped to patent law. A lot of my
candidates start putting things like "python" and "Matlab" on their resumes.

Long story short, the O&G industry can make you a lot of money, but it is
extremely variable, and you get _extremely_ specialized. A mech E with
"rotating equipment" can't do a "static equipment job," according to hiring
managers. Chem E can't do liquid natural gas jobs, even if they've got 15
years experience on all sorts of different projects. Etc. A lot of my
candidates and friends just decided they'd go for a field with a lower barrier
to entry and a much lower barrier for skill transfer.

(I did as well in the end)

~~~
likelynew
Seems like dotcom burst.

------
dsfyu404ed
This is terrible advice (IMO obviously). On the statistical level it basically
amounts to "disregard the currently accepted best practices".

On the individual level none of it matters. The right school won't make a high
achiever out of someone who's been a low achiever for 18yr and the wrong one
won't make a low achiever out of someone who's a high acheiver.

Depending on where you start in life (i.e. social and economic class) you're
probably only going to be able to go up/down a few rungs anyway and returns on
time spent stressing over having a strategic plan for college diminish very
quickly.

I take particular issue with 5. You should know what you want to do unless
you've got so much money and time that you don't mind pissing a way a lot of
both taking classes you don't actually need.

I partially agree with 3/4\. New grads are hired for who they know or what
they know. Nobody cares if you've got a major in psychology if you've spent
the last two years working with some education grad students writing software
to teach kids math.

~~~
foota
Although I'm not sure it's something that can be manipulated for gain, I do
think some people do better in different university environments.

------
jcadam
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but my advice: If you're graduating from
high school and don't know what you want to do for a living, join the military
- it'll grow you up fast and will provide you with great options for financing
your education once you do figure it out.

~~~
maccard
I'm not going to downvote you for it, but this is terrible advice. If you're
graduating form high school and don't know what you want to do for a living,
don't make a multi-year commitment to a job that has a very significant chance
of ruining your life. You can get out of waiting tables after 12 months if you
want to, but you can't just drop out of the army, and waiting tables has a
significantly smaller chance of removing one or more of your limbs.

~~~
solatic
Depending on where you get your figures from, somewhere between 80-85% of the
jobs in the US military are non-combat, where there is as little risk of
losing a limb as there is going about your day-to-day civilian life and losing
a limb in a car crash.

If you didn't find something in your breadth-but-not-depth high school studies
that grabbed your interest to the point where you decide that it's worth
pursuing a four-year college commitment to study it in further depth, I
struggle to understand how twelve months in a minimum wage job (a repetitive
daily routine that affords you little if any spending money) would help
clarify a direction.

------
adjkant
This is a good article in my opinion but it just requires context, situational
application, and some reading between the lines.

#1 is certainly true and is good to be aware of. CS doesn't usually see this,
but many physical sciences do see it.

#2 I didn't know _was_ a myth, so I'll be conveniently ignoring that one.

#3 is absolutely true, but as others have mentioned is not very applicable to
individuals who will usually go to the best school they can get into and
afford. However, it's a very useful consideration when it comes to politics,
social considerations, and more.

#4 is absolutely true. You can make a good living with any degree, but you
should always keep the practicality in mind no matter what major you are. You
can't just major in philosophy and expect a job - you need to have a
direction, seek internships in college, etc. That direction often changes and
evolves until one settles into a career that uses those philosophy degree
skills but isn't perhaps what you picture when you think about jobs for
philosophers.

Many have pointed out the flaws in #5 for STEM / Engineering, but for someone
deciding what they want to do within a set of options in the same range, it
often is very true. See a communications major's plentiful varying career
paths and possible compatible social science degrees that can be switched to
easily.

#6 is usually not true, but I think there's a larger point to take away, which
is that you don't need 5 classes in Y and 10 classes in Z to do job X. Often
mixing subjects with your interests and having that classic liberal arts
balance can be very useful. Psychology can be helpful in getting along with
coworkers in any office. Philosophy and ethics could certainly lead to better
corporate ethical action if it was widespread enough. I would revise #6 to be
"don't box your eduction in by your major". That isn't to say you need to
study a full liberal arts curriculum or create your own major either, but
simply to develop other relevant skills or interests you have that can aid
your life and major.

Obviously, this is a charitable reading, but I think there is some good value
hidden here.

~~~
emodendroket
> #4 is absolutely true. You can make a good living with any degree, but you
> should always keep the practicality in mind no matter what major you are.
> You can't just major in philosophy and expect a job - you need to have a
> direction, seek internships in college, etc. That direction often changes
> and evolves until one settles into a career that uses those philosophy
> degree skills but isn't perhaps what you picture when you think about jobs
> for philosophers.

I didn't do any of this stuff and I majored in Japanese and here I am working
in computer programming. I don't think it really makes _that much_ of a
difference what you major in. Anybody who's completed a college major has
acquired excellent tools to learn new skills.

------
zitterbewegung
How I picked my major:

During high school everyone one day was assigned to look at professions by
going on to the bls.gov website .

I picked Computer Science for two reasons .

1\. I feel like I would enjoy the job

2\. The job market for CS majors has high growth and low unemployment

3\. Median pay was above average .

~~~
gozur88
>I picked Computer Science for _two_ reasons .

Clearly you weren't cut out for math :)

~~~
giggles_giggles
He's a programmer, he just has problems with off-by-one errors

~~~
fhood
reasons[2] returns "Median pay was above average". I see no issue here.

~~~
smichel17
The original comment is 1-indexed, though.

~~~
zitterbewegung
Only on the view

------
cm2187
On myth 1 ("STEM always delivers"), I think the variation mostly reflects
people going into research & teaching vs working in the private sector. But no
one is forced into research (quite the opposite). I actually do think that the
downside for STEM is limited if earnings is something that matters to you.

[edit] Also the other thing to consider is that humanities is a bit of a one
way trip whereas STEM is not. I have seen numerous people with engineering
background getting into political science, history, even opera singing! I
hardly ever met someone who studied humanities becoming an engineer.

~~~
cirgue
> I have seen numerous people with engineering background getting into
> political science, history, even opera singing! I hardly ever met someone
> who studied humanities becoming an engineer.

Hi, now you have. I did a double major in political science and econ,
currently a machine learning engineer. Humanities is not at all a one-way
ticket unless you expect it to lead directly to a job. Humanities education is
for you, not for your employer.

> I have seen numerous people with engineering background getting into
> political science, history, even opera singing! I hardly ever met someone
> who studied humanities becoming an engineer.

Anecdotally, my experience is the opposite.

------
CalChris
Myth 5 and 6 are not myths at all. You need a strong preparation for most STEM
majors and at least at Berkeley, for engineering you need to apply to the COE
and for a specific major. L+S is different.

~~~
mamoswined
Yep, engineering was a different college within my university and that's
common in many public schools. It was not easy to switch in, they only
allocated a few spots a year for it.

~~~
CalChris
Tell me about it. I was the victim of some of this bad _find yourself_ advice.
I had a 3.8 when I petitioned to transfer into EECS from L+S. I got in but the
following semester EECS was heavily impacted and they turned away 4.0s.

The liberal arts are awesome. I took a ton of their classes. You really can
find yourself there. Engineering is not awesome. You cannot find yourself
there. You can only suffer which was I will admit, gloriously awesome. But I
had nightmares for years afterward that I hadn't finished this rec or that
rec. EECS sent me to the hospital my senior year. It's a tough route but I'm
tougher for it.

~~~
tfmatt
I had a recurring nightmare in which I registered for a class at the beginning
of the semester (generally a summer semester) and I somehow forgot about it
the very end of the semester. I've know others to also have this exact same
nightmare.

------
nitwit005
> Interpretive dance may not be in demand, but the competencies that liberal
> arts majors emphasize — writing, synthesis, problem solving — are sought
> after by employers

This sort of analysis always seems a bit silly. So sought after that they
struggle to get hired?

If you reduce what's being learned to an extremely generic term like "problem
solving", it stops being meaningful. Every major should be learning "problem
solving", so of course any employer is going to check the box on your skills
survey to mark it as a desired skill.

------
king07828
I wish, I wish, I wish someone would have had this talk with me pre-college:
"Why are you going to college? To learn a skill that you can use to pay the
bills with, i.e., to make money, right? If the goal is to make money, then
wouldn't it be a good idea to try a major where they literally teach you to
make money? Which college does that? Does engineering, science, or liberal
arts teach you how to make money? Or do they just teach you how to spend other
people's money? Hint, as an engineer you are someone else's cost. The college
of business literally teaches you how to make money, especially in finance,
where they teach how to start with a pile of money and make it a larger pile
of money. Granted, some grounding in the hard sciences is nice, but minors are
good for that. Final recommendation is Finance major with Computer science
minor, and then get an MBA after that as quickly as you can.”

I have bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and in computer science, a
law degree (years later in night school), and an MBA (years later again in
night school). I do not like that the only advice on picking a major was “do
what you enjoy/love”. I loved each of my majors when getting them and when
applying them, but I did not enjoy learning the hard way that I want to be the
guy paying others to make money for me, instead of the guy getting paid to
make money for someone else.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
I would have advised you to consider more carefully what you are optimizing
for and why.

Financial services have a role in a society where we measure value using money
- at a minimum we at least need to maintain systems to do all of the
accounting.

However, as the amount of energy / labor that we spend as a group focusing on
one set of problems increases, we are left with a decreasing amount to solve
all of the rest of the society’s problems.

If everyone is a banker, who will grow our food and build our houses?

I strongly disagree with your premise that all majors outside of finance “just
teach you how to spend money”. Every area of study provides you with knowledge
that you can use to solve real problems that we collectively face.

“Do what you love” is idealistic advice that does not take into consideration
the realities of a system which makes it extremely difficult to survive let
alone thrive without money, but money should be a means, not an end.

~~~
emodendroket
> “Do what you love” is idealistic advice that does not take into
> consideration the realities of a system which makes it extremely difficult
> to survive let alone thrive without money, but money should be a means, not
> an end.

I don't disagree, but there is no time when it's closer to practicable than
when you're in college.

------
BlackjackCF
I think choosing a major is important if you're the kind of person who thrives
on having that sort of structure. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
If you know you're that type of person, it's probably paramount to choose a
major that you like and do it early on so it'll set you on the right path for
your career.

------
mrep
Those numbers seem low. 90th percentile for computer science shows under 5
million which if we assume a 40 year career and even pay throughout one's
career (to make it easy), they would make under $125,000 a year.

Fresh new grads at big companies make more than that and they employ a lot of
people.

~~~
pc86
> _Fresh new grads at big companies make more than that and they employ a lot
> of people._

"A lot" <> {everyone,the majority,a plurality,a statistically significant
number}

$125/yr average for programmers across the US sounds just about right. I live
in a low COL area where new grads are lucky to hit $55k/yr. I make less than
$125k as a team lead with direct reports and budgetary responsibilities, and
my boss' boss (the director of our profit center) is somewhere in the
$150-165k range. Sounds bad compared to $400k total comp at Netflix, but my
mortgage is $900/mo, I have a yard, and I pay next to nothing (comparatively)
in taxes.

~~~
mrep
I would expect more than 10% and its not just the valley that is paying that.
Most other major cities are hitting that (although usually not quite as much
as the valley).

I would not expect groupon which is in chicago to be in the top 10% of salary
and they are paying average over that (also, glassdoor salaries are usually
low from what I have seen): [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Groupon-
Software-Engineer-S...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Groupon-Software-
Engineer-Salaries-E301291_D_KO8,25.htm)

------
eric_b
Work hard and strive towards excellence in your chosen field, and you'll
succeed long term. Huh, imagine that.

------
Tomminn
Nursing? I don't understand.

------
dogruck
This list of myths is composed of non-myths.

------
alexanderstears
These articles always read like someone attacking a strawman.

No college degree will make you rich. What a college degree offers is a change
in how competitive you are for higher paying jobs.

No one really gets wealthy working in STEM careers, but technical ability is
one of the most direct routes to having _at least_ a middle class life.

The choice of school matters, the choice of major matters, but not in
predictable ways and it's important to weigh the costs and benefits together.
Yeah, private schools have better alumni networks, but do you want to spend 4x
on your undergrad to access those? To what extent can you substitute hard work
for buying access?

When I was in high school, I seriously considered becoming a doctor. However,
I ran the numbers - becoming a doctor vs. going into business and working as
hard as I'd have to work to become a doctor. Becoming a doctor probably pays
off, but not until you're in your 40s. However, you can put away a lot more
money in your 20s and 30s working rather than studying medicine so the break
even point is very sensitive to the ROI. But the point is the same choose your
own adventure, but at least weigh the options.

