Cartoon by Michelle Phillips
College used to be different.
Students could afford to take their time and figure out what course of study they wanted to pursue, even if it meant changing majors a few times.
Not any more.
Now it is too expensive for most students to experiment with their education.
High school teachers and counselors herd students towards STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) and actively discourage them from trying other majors, especially the arts and humanities. New STEM graduates will be earning the highest starting salaries of 2016, according to a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Students who want to study something else are often told their choice is either low pay or bereft of opportunities and they should pick something else, like a STEM major.
What the teachers and counselors fail to tell their impressionable students is that there is a good chance they will end up changing majors no matter what they decide when they first enroll in college.
Many freshmen are led to believe college is going to be a straight shot to a career, but soon learn that the road to graduation twists and turns a lot more than they thought.
Science majors are touted to be the most highly-prized majors in the academic world. But the viability of post-graduate opportunities is inflated by an education system that pushes its students toward the sciences while neglecting other fields.
“STEM crisis or STEM surplus?” asks an article in Market Labor Review. “Yes and yes.” The number of students going into STEM majors has decreased, which suggests a looming crisis, but only half of current STEM graduates go on to find a job related to their degree.
Although STEM majors continue to be advertised to high school students as being high pay and in-demand, the reality is that across the board college graduates are underemployed.
The New York Fed examined those that graduated between 2009 and 2013 and found that 45 percent of college grads work in “non-college” jobs that are defined as positions in which less than 50 percent of the workers in that job need a bachelor’s degree. Of that 45 percent, 25.2 percent held office or administrative positions paying an average of $37,207, and 11.4 percent that were in information processing and business support were earning an average of $59,059. This is below the average of $78,500 for a job that requires a college degree.
An article titled “Is It Where You Go or What You Study? The Relative Influence of College Selectivity and College Major on Earnings” found that for STEM graduates it does not matter much where you went to college. Only business majors see a significant economic advantage from attending a prestigious university, according to the article.
College can be an incredibly expensive endeavor. Not all students have the benefit of grants, scholarships or wealthy parents, but even though most college students change their major at least once, many students eventually reach a point of no return where they feel stuck in a major that does not make them happy.
Possible solutions include changing majors, but given the cost of education dropping out is often considered a more desirable path than starting over their academic career from scratch while continuing to go into further debt.
There are far more opportunities for other majors than what students are taught in school, but there is a greater need for those interested in the arts, humanities and other fields than society is willing to admit. Instead of allowing lawyers to continue to run the country, there needs to be more philosophers, historians and scientists in positions of leadership.
Big businesses want to continue to be the gatekeepers of employment, but the Internet has become a great equalizer.
Crowdfunding websites like Patreon, Indiegogo and Kickstarter allow any kind of project to have an equal chance to succeed without a corporations judges killing it because it does not initially seem profitable.
The Internet allows for individual content creators to claim their own niche. Despite the big business side of the media attempting to make the most money by seeking the largest audience possible.
