Survey Reveals the Most-Regretted (and Least-Regretted) College Majors (cnbc.com) 140
A report from the Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce found that Bachelor's degree holders generally earn 84% more than those with just a high school diploma, reports CNBC.
"Still, 44% of all job seekers with college degrees regret their field of study." Journalism, sociology, communications and education all topped the list of most-regretted college majors, according to ZipRecruiter's survey of more than 1,500 college graduates who were looking for a job. "When you are barely managing to pay your bills, your paycheck might become more important." Of graduates who regretted their major, most said that, if they could go back, they would now choose computer science or business administration instead.
All in, the top-paying college majors earn $3.4 million more than the lowest-paying majors over a lifetime.
Graduates entering the workforce with good career prospects and high starting salaries are the most satisfied with their field of study, job site ZipRecruiter also found. Computer science majors, with an average annual starting salary of almost $100,000, were the happiest overall, according to ZipRecruiter. Students who majored in criminology, engineering, nursing, business and finance also felt very good about their choices.
"Still, 44% of all job seekers with college degrees regret their field of study." Journalism, sociology, communications and education all topped the list of most-regretted college majors, according to ZipRecruiter's survey of more than 1,500 college graduates who were looking for a job. "When you are barely managing to pay your bills, your paycheck might become more important." Of graduates who regretted their major, most said that, if they could go back, they would now choose computer science or business administration instead.
All in, the top-paying college majors earn $3.4 million more than the lowest-paying majors over a lifetime.
Graduates entering the workforce with good career prospects and high starting salaries are the most satisfied with their field of study, job site ZipRecruiter also found. Computer science majors, with an average annual starting salary of almost $100,000, were the happiest overall, according to ZipRecruiter. Students who majored in criminology, engineering, nursing, business and finance also felt very good about their choices.
Nerds Rule! (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was "Gnomes Rule!" (Score:2)
(A book or two had something like that... "The Land" LitRPG series was one).
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i for one would vote to forgive all ms debt sufferers...
Criminology? (Score:2)
I thought that was a subset of sociology - which is one of the least appreciated post facto. Instead it's highly valued. Are the mafia requiring a degree to be recruited to their ranks these days?
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In the same sense that medicine is a subset of biology...
Then there is the distinction between sociology and what is going on in the Sociology Department, which is very contentious. There are deep divisions within the field about what the field is about, and what valid methods for exploring it are. This is perhaps symbolized by how so many movements in academic are "anti-" or "post-" something.
College is not for everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
The push to have everyone go to college is misguided. Learning a skill or trade can be just as valuable. It is important to choose a skill/trade that is valuable to the world. If you can find the intersection of doing something you love and doing something that others value then you will do just fine.
Re:College is not for everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because people think they can comfortably pay back their loans by majoring in sociology. Yes it is possible to be a millionaire in that, by marrying a wealthy person you meet at some fundraiser. But the vast majority of people in that major are screwed. People are sold into it by the glamor of changing the world, and how sociology is super essential for society. Umm, yeah maybe it is super essential .. but what use is majoring in that if you're gonna be shift leader at McDonald's? Do you need a degree in sociology to work your ass off for hard rote labor? We are ruining lives by doing nothing about this bullshit.
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Or, just hear me out on this one. College shouldn’t be the cost of a McMansion. Or at the very least government loans shouldn’t have interest. Education shouldn’t incur decades of debt.
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Cheaper college tuition would require fewer people taking out loans to attend college.
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Maybe college shouldn't even be the cost of a Big Mac.
Re:College is not for everyone (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah all those college profs driving around in Lambos...
Re: College is not for everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things could help.
1. Require colleges and lenders to publish the financial reality of any given major. How much do graduates in average make on graduation and then after 5/10 years? How long do graduates take to pay back the loans.
2. Allow newly taken loans to be discharged through bankruptcy. Get the government out of the lending business, forcing private lenders to properly assess risk. If this means a poor student can't get stupidly in debt to study political science and dance then so be it - they should choose a major that pays.
Re: College is not for everyone (Score:2)
Or maybe we stop subsidizing universities with a seemingly bottomless pit of money so they have to figure out how to educate students without piles of no instructional admins and miles of luxury buildings?
Re: College is not for everyone (Score:2)
Definitely. Stemming the flow of credit would reduce the distortion in pricing. It'd also mean fewer graduates with useless degrees finding themselves buried in debt.
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Communications folks make good marketers, which is necessary and frankly sociology or psychology make people better leaders; it's just that the path isn't as clearly laid out so you need to be a little creative t
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I'd much rather have someone who understands people and how to organize and construct a team actually lead a team than someone who has mostly technical skills being the leader of a group.
In my experience, it's signficantly easier to teach a technical person some management skills than it is to teach a manager some technical skills. That's an experience based on doing it myself and working under/with quite a few of them.
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Re:College is not for everyone (Score:5, Informative)
This is the path I took. I went to a technical school to get a degree a EE. Then once I had secured a job in that field that paid the bills, I returned to a university to get my masters in CS.
When people ask me what I think they should do. I always say secure a education in what will pay the bills first. Then go after your passion. You want to be a bullshit artist, err philosophy major, go for it. But first get a education with a practical skill that you can fall back on.
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This is the path I took. I went to a technical school to get a degree a EE. Then once I had secured a job in that field that paid the bills, I returned to a university to get my masters in CS.
When people ask me what I think they should do. I always say secure a education in what will pay the bills first. Then go after your passion. You want to be a bullshit artist, err philosophy major, go for it. But first get a education with a practical skill that you can fall back on.
I'd agree there's a lot more people going into journalism or sociology than there should be, but don't under estimate the value in the arts.
The further you go in your career the more important communication and interpersonal skills are, and the Sciences and Engineering aren't great at teaching that. I have my bachelors and masters in CS, which certainly was essential to start my career, but at this point I feel like I draw on the soft skills I learned on the arts side more than the majority of the CS course
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How did you like the CS masters?
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How did you like the CS masters?
It was a waste of time and money. By the time I completed the classes, which I could have taught, I was already well established in my chosen field. It was for that reason I decided not to get a PhD..
How does that saying go? BS = Bullshit, MS = More Shit, PHD = piled higher and deeper
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That's unfortunate. CS has a lot of good stuff that can be taught.
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To back that up, "Construction trades" is listed among the list of least regretted college majors. Just about all the least regretted ones seem to be related to actually building something, like comp sci or engineering, or at least focus on something that translates well into a specific job that we value, such as criminology, health, nursing, and even human resources management.
I do wonder how this list would compare across other countries though, especially in places where the cost of attending college i
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The result of this is that people who had the plan of a life "in the trades" frequently reach a peak in their late
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It is not about judging capability, I'm saying that not everyone *needs* a college degree to be successful and productive in society. I work in IT and I never graduated college, I went to some college but when to work instead of finishing. I am the only person where I work without a college degree. Lack of a degree is not holding me back. A mortgage worth of debt before I got a job would have held me back. Not finishing college does not make me some kind of dumb lemming either, don't be so pretentious.
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You seem to be assuming that everyone that is capable goes to college and that people that do not go to college are not capable. I used critical thinking to determine that I did not need a degree for a good paying job in IT, turns out I was right.
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, can it with the stupid class warfare rhetoric. It's tiresome, and no, nobody is out to kill you as a matter of policy. If anyone kills you it's most likely to be in an auto accident. You're dragging the conversation away from the actual topic in order to push agenda-driven dialogue.
Secondly, university education with all the bells and whistles is expensive. Very expensive. The more people you expect to educate in this fashion, the worse it gets. We I'm the United States are arguably already sending too many people into higher education.
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Do you have proof or is it just a hunch? Unemployment rate is not high yet we stand on almost 8 decades of technological progress and population growth following WW2. My theory is that we actually expand our work as soon as we gain any advantage from automation or population growth. Human desire beats any gains automation can produce. It's not a zero sum game.
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So when you mean somebody who's "not college material" it's because we, as a civilization, didn't do our job.
I disagree. University it a particular type of learning which tends to be geared somewhat towards the academic side and somewhat less towards the practical side. That skew isn't for everyone. Now, saying "not college material" is dickish because there's a fairly strong implied value judgement there.
Learning is indeed for everyone, but university and especially university straight out of school isn't
The most regretted majors (Score:5, Funny)
Journalism, Sociology, Liberal arts/general studies, Communications
Oh the humanities!
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People who go into Journalism and are actually clever and motivated end up investigative journalists or war reported for a renown journal. The good ones in sociology can end up in government agencies. These ones don't regret. People who take journalism or sociology because they lacked skills and motivation to get into engineering or nursing and thought humanities had to be an easy pick, get very disappointed at their low prospect for an interesting and/or well-paid job.
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Journalists see themselves being wedged in between amateurs reporting on Twitter and having their Twitch shows and the propaganda outlets that spew whatever nonsense their owner wants the public to believe.
"Real" journalism is on the way out.
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Best joke of the day? Oh well.
I had some high hopes Funny for the story.
And a vested interest? I actually completed four majors (and failed with a couple of others). I have one from both the top and bottom lists, and I can't say that I regret the one that is supposed to be most regrettable or feel like the least regretted major was that valuable (except that I acknowledge most of my income came from that side). (Now I'm retired and finally reading some of my old textbooks cover to cover (rather than in exce
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I think this has more to do with a hiring practice that I like to call the "college bias". Job offers required you to have some college degree. Emphasis on some. In other words, companies didn't give a fuck just WHAT you studied as long as you had a masters in something. Of course this means that people tried to get their degree in something that didn't require a lot of work.
Guess what, companies noticed and now want relevant degrees.
I like the fact that journalism and education (Score:2, Interesting)
Also if you get a communications degree and you don't go in the marketing you're doing it wrong. There's plenty of good-paying jobs as project managers too. The problem with communications majors is they have a hard time thinking outside their degree because they all
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"The problem isn't them it's us for treating people that important that poorly."
They aren't treated poorly in as much as they are treated like an abundant commodity. There are way too many of them to warrant a high salary.
There are WAY too many lawyers, too. Many are working as legal aids rathern than working lawyers because they can't find a job or open their own business in super saturated markets.
I'm serious. If you tied a sociologist to a string and dipped them in a pool of folks qualified for that f
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"We're not talking about sociologists but we could do with a lot more of those and a lot less SWAT people doing no knock warrants"
FTFA:
"Journalism, SOCIOLOGY (emph mine), communications and education all topped the list of most-regretted college majors"
The more you get, the less they'll be paid or find employment in their field of study.
We hire more of them in CA than pretty much anywhere else and easy to document property crime (basically anything that requires a police report for insurance) are way up. O
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What is sick is that many schools teach propaganda in the SAME department they teach journalism!
(P.R. == propaganda)
Journalism sadly == reporting == teleprompter reader for many... let the com majors read the prompters but bring back journalism.
Fascism like many critically important words are being destroyed in todays newspeak right out of 1984. That comes 1st... Hell, ANTIFA (which is most of humanity) is now some manufactured boogie man; this is precursor. Propaganda leads the movements.
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Plenty of journalists regret discovering that their job is to write listicles with better CTRs. Plenty of teachers regret discovering that their job involves babysitting monsters who don't want to learn and administering standardized tests and implementing policies they disagree with.
Student loans (Score:3)
Before giving someone the gift of half a million dollars in debt, they should attest that they have read this report on the employment prospects and salary of their major. If financial institutes, and the government, were a little intelligent, they would require that colleges publish what their graduates of a particular major makes. Every university should be surveying their graduates to find out what situation they're in. Students are making dumb decisions because they aren't properly informed what they're getting into by taking massive loans. I don't see how it is in anyone's interest to have people skilled in things we aren't willing to pay people for knowing.
learn math (Score:2)
Sorry, I know 44% of you think you're "not good at math". But if you want a job that uses your degree that's one you have to go for. Also note that being bad at English doesn't seem to matter much in STEM fields, I'm proof of that.
Re:learn math (Score:4, Insightful)
Also note that being bad at English doesn't seem to matter much in STEM fields, I'm proof of that.
Yet somehow, every single job listing mentions "excellent communications skills" as some sort of hard requirement. You read that enough, and one would think someone like you should be completely unemployable.
As someone with "mediocre" communications skills (compered to a liberal arts major, which might make me a superstar compared to the average engineer), I'm glad that's not enforced. :-)
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1. Can Speak and Email to a western audience without sounding like classist idiot.
2. Effectively listening to the question presented.
3. For IT, be able to draw a logic or network diagram without hours of instruction.
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You read that enough, and one would think someone like you should be completely unemployable.
It's like those jobs that require 20 years of Kubernetes experience.
They made me take some liberal arts sort of classes in college, but they were toned down for the engineering students. I had to read some books and write coherent essays. Not once did I receive a mark implying I had "excellent communication skills".
I can communicate in C and quote spec in code reviews. That's concise and effective communication in the context of what I do. I guess even excellence is relative.
Quality of teaching varies (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, I know 44% of you think you're "not good at math". But if you want a job that uses your degree that's one you have to go for. Also note that being bad at English doesn't seem to matter much in STEM fields, I'm proof of that.
I've encountered a lot of people who claim to be bad at math, and my advice is always the same: go online and find someone teaching the exact same subject in a different way.
I've sampled and/or taken a lot of online college courses, and some of them simply "click" with me and I can see the value. The exact same information taught by a different teacher can be a boring nightmare of incomprehensible gibberish. I cite as a specific example "Probabilistic Graphical Models" from Stanford, whose teacher wrote the textbook, as incomprehensible gibberish. Fortunately for me, I was taught that same subject by a different teacher using different methods, and find the subject to be logical, consistent, and simple to understand.
Not being good at English (writing) is also a frequent complaint, and having gone through the machinations here I don't have good recommendations.
The way to get good at English writing is to write frequently with immediate feedback. The rules of good English are relatively simple and easy to pick up; as an example, detecting and expunging passive voice is fairly simple, but it's nigh impossible to get the knack without some basic practice. With no feedback, it's almost impossible to hone this skill. Terse and active construction is also fairly simple, but again without practice and feedback it's difficult to master.
None of this was well covered in my college writing courses. Even the actual *reason* for writing well was not covered in writing courses - it was simply a course to take in college.
Spoken English is even harder, but if you join Toastmasters and pay attention you can make great progress here. (Toastmasters will give you bi-weekly practice with near immediate feedback.)
People don't really realize that the manner of their spoken English affects how people view them. With Toastmasters you can cultivate an ear for good (and bad) speaking, then listen to interviews in news shows and online, and tell how disorganized and fractured peoples' thinking actually is. Many politicians can't put together good sentences, and many rely on repetitions of memorized simple glib phrases that sound good but are essentially meaningless.
Overall, you should never let lack of understanding to get in your way of doing anything. If you have trouble learning anything, take the time to look around and see if there aren't different ways to get the same information.
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I think most (nearly all) human beings can learn math. At the very least a person with average intelligence can dive at least a little bit into the Calculus and linear algebra. Not everyone learns the same way or at the same speed and some will find the concept non-intuitive and may have to put forth additional effort.
As for my own lack of ability in English. It has a lot more to do with blowing off most of the classes in middle school and high school. Spelling and basic grammar are sometimes difficult for
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Keep in mind this metric is kind of warped. (Score:5, Insightful)
Beware of market populism. They system we have now is warped, and doesn't function in the ways most people think it should.
Re:Keep in mind this metric is kind of warped. (Score:4, Insightful)
When it comes to pay, higher pay has never gone to workers who do the most important work. It goes to the people who are the hardest to replace. Childcare, a critically important job, pays next to nothing, because it's so easy to find somebody who can do it. Even a teenager can successfully watch out for kids. On the other hand, pro athletes--a job arguably not very important in the scheme of things--pays so much, because it's so hard to find somebody who can do it well.
In between the extremes are STEM jobs, which pay well because it's hard to find workers, and these jobs are often quite important.
Degree is only tangentially related to what I do (Score:5, Interesting)
First, I will go over what I do. Then will come what degree I have. . . oh hell, I will just get it out now. I have the much maligned MBA. Then, I will go over the path that led to here.
Firstly, I am a middle school teacher. I am sometimes asked, why not a college teacher? It is really simple, I had to draw the pay line somewhere and the colleges pay less. I teach computer applications, Photoshop, personal finance, robotics, and programming. Yes, I realize that is a lot of classes. many subjects are combined. For example, in computer 1, which is an even mix of sixth and seventh graders, we start the semester with personal finance through computer applications.
The way that works is, for example, I start a day with a short reading and explanation of the effect of interest rates on the amount paid for financed goods. Then we would make a spreadsheet illustrating this. Now, about 2/3rds through the semester we are switching to the photoshop units. There they will cover the first three chapters in the photoshop book. For those wondering, it is the Shelly Cashman book. in Robotics the students complete increasingly complex tasks with a Lego EV3 robot. That class is largely sixth and seventh grade. Programming is concurrent, meaning I have two classes in the room at the same time. The programming students are performing increasingly complex tasks with the Arduino while also learning basic electronics and fabrication. An example of the fabrication is the soldering project, where they make a simple LED Christmas tree.
Running the two classes at the same time also serves as a hook for the Robotics 1 students, in that some of them want to move on to that class. Frankly, Robotics 2 (the actual name of the programming class) does look like more fun. However, for Robotics 2, the students have to have the instructor's (me) permission to take it. As such, I have less of the problem of students just sitting around and letting their lab partner do the work. They want to be seen working on, and testing the EV3 programs along with being seen helping struggling students (this is a title 1 , read poverty, school. A lot of these kids have never done anything even closely similar, to what they do in my class, before).
Now, the path here. After community college, where I studied electronic technology, I worked as an office machine repairman for about ten years, yes, copiers, duplicators, and high-volume printers. There came a point when I noticed that I didn't see any old guys doing my job. The few that had been there seemed to be the first people caught in layoff rounds, it is true, as people got older, their numbers did sometimes start to slip.
I finished my BA and then spent some time as a field manager. There are two ways to have field managers. The first is to keep people at that rank forever. The problem is that there is no promotion path for people in the position I had been in. The second is the Up-or-Out approach.
As you can guess, I went up. As yu can also guess, I was not a good fit. To rely on the o'le hiring question "what is your biggest fault?" The right, but oh-so-very wrong answer is, "being honest, I frequently make the mistake of being honest."
I had picked it up in my decade-plus as a technician. I would first be honest. Then, if the customer insisted on an answer that reflected a different reality, I would tell them what they wanted to hear. It went like this, ". . . . I expect to have that part the day after tomorrow, which accounts for order processing and shipping time." At that point, the customer sometimes got very irate and demanded an answer that reflected a different reality. I then told told them something like, "well, I can check with the other technicians at lunch and see if anyone has that part in their van. If so I can be back first thing after lunch." I then called them after lunch and told them it looked like I needed to order the part.
H
PhD n Philosophy (Score:2)
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Yup. Never finished college but the only classes that I remember and consider are from Philosophy.
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I also did some CS. None of the languages I studied are still in use.
But I also studied Latin, and still use that every day. I was actually hired at IBM for a coop job because I was learning Latin.
In high school, though, I took a brilliant CS course - the first half of the year was writing algorithms and flowcharts. That analytic skill has stayed with me.
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I also did some CS. None of the languages I studied are still in use.
But I also studied Latin, and still use that every day. I was actually hired at IBM for a coop job because I was learning Latin.
In high school, though, I took a brilliant CS course - the first half of the year was writing algorithms and flowcharts. That analytic skill has stayed with me.
Yeah, my CS courses were pretty useless and I program for a living. Then again, I was the only CS120 student who had to SUBMIT their code as proof it worked vs. just printing it.
The teacher says to me "I know it must work, I just don't see how".
I also managed to write a sort that wasn't a merge, bubble, or selection but worked - the efficiency was the same as a bubble sort . . . so another way to make a lightbulb (albeit poorly).
"Think different" was an entirely unintentional lifestyle for me and "user-ho
davidwr (Score:2, Insightful)
I have two degrees in engineering. I regret not taking another semester and studying more humanities. It would've done me good both in my high-tech career and just as a person.
Why didn't I extend graduation to do that? One word: Finances.
Physics, neat, clear and short. (Score:3)
Got pulled away multiple times with long term consulting gigs doing grunt work on Microsoft, Cisco, 3COM and Novell. A good amount of getting people off of doomed platforms. Never really did graduate.... but I passed Differential equations and had enough of a backround in Fortran and Pascal that the other object related languages were not foreign. By 1997 Y2K spending was in full swing, and building PCs and a bit of AS400 export skills was profit to support keep up the other skills.
The time spent looking at data presentation methods of physics was the most valuable items. Learning the techniques of 1990s Autocad, Quatro, Access and WP probalby got me alot more credit than I deserved through the 1990s, and lauched me at MS SQL, VB, PHP, IIS in the early 00s, mostly presenting data via a Webbrowser and a graphing library. Wrote a few shopping carts like everyone else, but knew the lifetime for online retail programing was very limited.
Once I entered fortune 500, never really needed a technology outside of networking to fall back on until 2008-2011....fun dumb times. That is the only era where the next job did not call me. By 2015 I was pulling down more in 4-12 week consulting gigs than I make today as a middle level IT manager. Giving up 60-90 hour billable weeks for a stable paycheck for a personal life was very hard.
Today I have 15 years more of 40-60 hour weeks, and the more I do, the more I change, the more I am working on a system more like why I got into physics. Connected systems of behavior that only very rarely do strange things.
Today I manage a very select technology platform and keep 30 something with to few skill sets working in a generally aligned direction for fortune 500 and keep the discussion in the tone of science and not SJW. Knowing how to miniplate a query and present data is still my value add. Learned how to talk to people who were clearly much smarter than myself while keeping liberal arts majors engaged. The guys from former Warsaw pac, china and india that flooded the physics departments of the 1990s taught me how to listen to critically different voices in team efforts.
CS is mostly a meh degree (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe that CS majors have the fewest regrets, but I'll be honest, I feel like it's one of the least required degrees for the job market.
I have a friend who is an incredible programmer. He's much better at it than me, picks up on concepts faster than I do, and has risen to a higher level of responsibility than me in less time. I don't feel badly about it; I'm a good programmer, he's just better. But he doesn't have a degree. He had to drop out for financial reasons. He's really worked his way up and taught himself how to be a good programmer.
My CS/Math Sciences degree doesn't factor much into my day-to-day games programming job. Over the last 20 years, I've only used my formal education a few times. Unlike my nursing friends, the practical part of the CS degree doesn't really show itself particularly often. I notice this a lot with those of us that have CS degrees. The only reason you need one is to overcome the automated resume checkers that look for your BSc.
A CS degree has lots of interesting parts to it, but you'll never use most of it unless you go to grad school. If you want to be a programmer, just go be a programmer. My sister did a programming boot camp, and she's got a great job now. (She does data analysis for a provincial health board; she has good data analysis skills from doing a PhD in archaeology. The programming in Python and R was something that she could do in a few months.)
Honestly, the most valuable part of my degree is the part that I have regrets about, and it has nothing to do with computers: I did a minor in Earth and Atmospheric Science, and I wish I'd pursued that more. I regret not going into those physical sciences. Programming has given me a great career, but when I read scientific stuff for pleasure, it's almost never about computing and almost always about biology or geology or something that I had a chance to go after.
We're not ready to make life decisions at 18, honestly. The problem here isn't that there are too many 'useless' degrees, it's that we're pushed to make decisions before our brains can truly understand what we want, what the repercussions are, what we want out of our lives. Not as many things require a degree as we tell people they do; a lot of degrees are just gatekeeping. You can be a programmer or an artist or a writer without a degree.
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Maybe, but I think that I would be the same level of programmer that I am now if I didn't have my degree. The formal education didn't teach me much, it just gave me experience that I could've got on the job.
I've met lots of programmers over my years, and the number of us that say that we don't use our degrees much is pretty high. One of my colleagues has a degree in math, and he's a fantastic programmer. His math degree comes in handy more often than his CS background.
The degree isn't why I'm successful, is
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What I found a bit depressing was that when I got to college, the majority of CS students were not only marginally interested in the subject, but only wanted to get the degree and get paid. I knew only two other CS majors who wrote code on their own outside of what the college required. In a 20 year career, I've only met a handful of engineers who wrote code for the joy of doing it.
I'm one of those people. I can easily write code at a rate of 150 kloc annually. That's about 10 to 100 times the rate o
The Georgetown report is from 2015. (Score:3)
It should go without saying that making enough... (Score:2)
But there is a lot to be said for a job that might not pay as well, but you have more of a passion for than something that you are only doing because it might happen to pay you more.
Again, I'm not saying that making less than what you actually need is ever okay, but once those demands are actually met, making more than that at a job you dislike or where you are otherwise treated like you don't matter is only going to deprive you of the kinds o
Newsflash: Easy majors don't pay much (Score:2)
The majors that are difficult to obtain tend to pay much more. Big surprise.
"Fluff majors" (ie: Liberal Arts majors) give people mostly worthless degrees that don't allow graduates to earn a decent living.
It's like trying to sell dirt. It's everywhere so it's not worth much.
Meanwhile... (Score:2)
... those of us who worked through college while attending an inexpensive community college, and came out with an associate's degree in a computer science related field -- and critically, with no school loan debt -- are probably doing better than both the high school graduates and the bachelor's degree holders.
I regret nothing.
Re:Trade School (Score:5, Insightful)
Society needs teachers and journalists, and sociologists have brought some major benefits too.
Particularly with teacher it's messed up that we pay them so badly. They are preparing the workforce of the future, the ones who our pensions depend on. Not to mention the future electorate.
Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
We do need teachers, but ones that can actually teach. We do need journalists, but ones that can actually do the journalism thing.
Before the liberal arts went off the rails with their post-modern, post-fact, Critical Theory bullshit^WMarxism indoctrination, they were somewhat useful. Now?
One way out of the regret is religious zeal, so that's why a number of the most useless studies, even actively detrimental to society "studies", aren't actually regretted. "DEI officer" is the new political officer. They're far worse than useless, but somehow not regretted. I wonder why.
Re: Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of these we really don't need. Sociology is an umbrella term that covers, among other things, gender studies. I've yet to see a compelling reason why our economy would benefit from gender studies.
Some college degrees are what I refer to as passion projects. Passion projects are fine and all, if you really want to do them, then by all means go for it. But don't expect to actually make a career out of them. If you're already rich and/or already have a means of making a living, then yeah, do these things. But if you don't, then your priority in college shouldn't be a passion project.
Re: Meh (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if it doesn't, then your income is going to be dog shit, and then you're going to be dependent on welfare, a drain on everybody else that works for a living, and you're going to spend all of your free time talking about how evil capitalism is because it doesn't reward you for doing things that nobody cares about but you, even though in theory communism isn't supposed to do that either.
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That's generally how you earn a fat paycheck. Which is the main topic of discussion.
Re: Meh (Score:2)
Because if you depend on taxpayers to pay for your degree then your field should pay an income that is both sufficient to repay the taxpayers AND support you via employment because your education provided skills that are in demand
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The studies should benefit society; the subsidy is to offset the economic disadvantage of that social benefit.
Society doesn't benefit from everyone wanting to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, programmers, and MBAs. It distorts society as well as the broader economy.
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You can tell when "society" is benefitting from thing X when its members are willing to exchange scarce resources, like money, for X. The fact that people won't pay for a thing (like a salary to hire a sociology BA) is evidence that they don't value it, relative to alternatives.
Re: Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
Gender studies and racial studies can help to do a better job of integrating more of the population into the economy and innovation.
Citation needed. Maybe if these "studies" were evidence-based and produced useful action plans.. .
But instead they are ideology based, and have no interest in facts that conflict with pre-determined outcomes.
If you want to integrate people, you would identify their abilities and interests, and how to incentivise them. In reality, they are more interested in making excuses and separating society into classes such as victims and oppressors. That is not science, and certainly not beneficial. In the real world, social inequality is only increasing, despite promoting a small number of higher visible minorities into the elite class.
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Depends on if you are addressing "now" or long term. You need to allow debate and normalize things over time with a new field of study as well-- initial fringe theories get validated or thrown out over time.
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Sure, it shouldn't be a huge department, but there is value.
This is the key part. Human civilization needs a little of everything, and there is absolutely value in having some people who specialize in very niche topics. Some amazing things come from the study of niches topics, even in social studies. But we absolutely don't need thousands upon thousands of people who are experts in the same niche, because it's a niche.
Re: Meh (Score:2)
The current gender and racial studies programs have no value because they make the flawed assumption that the nature of peoples genitals and what the they do with them or their skin color and racial heritage are the primary factor in determining their capabilities and opportunities in the workforce. These traits are demonstrably irrelevant in practice and do not have any bearing on the success or failure of any given company.
Remember that Equifax data breach not too long ago? Their chief security officer wa
Re: Meh (Score:2)
Their chief security officer was a woman with a degree in music. Turns out she was a supremely bad choice for that type of position
For cyber security, there actually aren't going to be very many people with a lot of experience that have a degree directly relevant to it. 10 years ago most people were ignoring it, and I myself had a hard time figuring out how to enter the field. At the time, it was rare to find any degree programs for it at most universities.
That said, I don't know whether she truly was or was not qualified for that job. Knowing what I know about how security incidents happen, she could have done everything right from an
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Before the liberal arts went off the rails with their post-modern, post-fact, Critical Theory bullshit^WMarxism indoctrination, they were somewhat useful.
You'll have to tell us when that was, because it only happened in your head.
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"Before the liberal arts went off the rails with their post-modern, post-fact, Critical Theory bullshit^WMarxism indoctrination, they were somewhat useful. Now?"
Have you actually spent time in a university where liberal arts subjects were taught anytime recently, or are you basing that conclusion off rants that some politician or pundit have offered? Sure, if you are looking for examples of "indoctrination", confirmation bias will allow you to find plenty. But if you are actually examining the academy with
Re: Trade School (Score:3, Insightful)
While there is some specialized knowledge particular to teaching in general and teaching children in particular, there is no substitute for experience in communicating technical subjects especially.
We'd be doing a lot better if the bulk of math, science, and rhetoric were taught by experienced professionals at mid career pr later than by kids fresh out of university who majored in "education" alone and just read out of the teacher's manual.
What you're talking about is a very superficial credentialism: teach
Re: Trade School (Score:4, Insightful)
We'd be doing a lot better if the bulk of math, science, and rhetoric were taught by experienced professionals at mid career pr later than by kids fresh out of university who majored in "education" alone and just read out of the teacher's manual.
The problem, of course, is that there likely aren't many people at this stage of their lives that are actually willing to do a career-change to something that pays significantly less than what they're used to and demands an additional set of skills they still need to develop. (and might not necessarily be good at)
Of course we'd all be better off if we actually could get people to do this, but the instances of it actually happening are likely extremely rare. You pretty much need to find people who are already independently wealthy, doing some soul searching, and eager for a complete change.
Re: Trade School (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Trade School (Score:2)
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Among other things, that would probably require paying the teachers better. Also, the quality of students matters as well. It's pretty clear that this article is conflating university majors with careers. These people aren't regretting their majors because there was something wrong with the teaching or the subject. They're regretting their majors because they aren't making enough money and/or their jobs are bad in other ways. That raises the question though, can everyone actually cut it in computer science
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"Society needs teachers and journalists, and sociologists have brought some major benefits too."
When there are far too many of them that many end up working as baristas or taking orders at the local Denny's it's fairly safe to say we don't need any MORE of them.
I was originally a philosophy/history major. I switched when I realized there's not a huge market for corporate philosophers or historians. Got an degree in CS and have been gainfully employed since and well respected in my field (data/programming
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Particularly with teacher it's messed up that we pay them so badly. They are preparing the workforce of the future, the ones who our pensions depend on. Not to mention the future electorate.
Where I live, the school district had a massive number of retirements as experienced teachers decided they had enough and bailed; and younger ones, especially math or science, decided they would rather earn much more with fewer headaches. Even now, some are retiring during the school year rather then stick it out. Most of the coaches stayed, but unless they start winning they are likely gone as well.
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Particularly with teacher it's messed up that we pay them so badly.
Yeah but we make up for it with vast amounts of grinding paperwork.
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They are preparing the workforce of the future, the ones who our pensions depend on.
The only reason our pensions depend on them is because in 1979 or 1980 (I forget which), they took all of the money in Social Security, which was entirely self-funded at that time, and bought US Bonds.
Since they spent the money that was placed into Social Security, I have been paying for my parents Social Security and the original money that was there is *POOF*, just gone. I think it got spent on Star Wars aka SDI to bankrupt the Soviet Union and to cement the now-permanent (until civilization collapses any
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Please let's end state education.
Re:Trade School (Score:4, Informative)
Vouchers give the people more control of education. Eliminating taxation for education would be even better. The fraction of the people that would homeschool under a voucher system is likely small.
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Vouchers would be paid for by taxation, so it doesn't go hand in hand with eliminating taxation at all. So those without kids are still paying the taxes, which is good because a well educated population is worth the price. Vouchers will ony be necessary for those avoiding public schools, meaning they defray costs of private schools; and private schools are usually either elite schools or religious schools. Using taxes for either of those is a big problem for many.
Tax money is better spent on improving sc
Re: Trade School (Score:2)
If parents relieve a certain public school of the duty to educate their children by sending them elsewhere, why should that school still get the funds for educating the children that donâ(TM)t go there?
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You pay because having an educated public is good for the community. It's good for business owners. It's good for those who want to live in a healthy community. It's good for people who believe in democracy and civic engagement.
Public tax dollars should not be used to support religious education. Pursuing religious education is your right, but the government should not be involved in paying for it.
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What term do you use for someone who teaches Kindergarten to Third grade students inappropriate sexual content?
Until someone shows evidence of it happening, I would call it a fantasy.
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People thinking that journalists only need a cell phone and a shitty blog is one of the major problems with US politics at the moment.