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I totally see your point. In 1990s, it was harder to do research as internet was just starting (when I was in college). I majored in something with terrible pay but after internet turned out to be excellent springboard for anything online -- communications (newspaper)...I've worked the secretarial and office thing to survive here, but other thing to really recognize is size of market where you want to work and your own socio-economic level. Poor people end up taking anything after college that will pay bills unless you want to spend the necessary 2-5 years bumming parents or you found right relationship who can pay bills. It's normal to crash with parents now, mine were misery maker parents so first priority was getting away from the verbal abuse. Smaller cities have a lot fewer 'professional jobs' especially in basket weaving & Roman history, most are gonna be working clerical, manufacturing or minimum wage.
Do notice big trend locally for the new graduates to just sit on their behind until they get a professional level job doing something, anything -- going into the retail or restaurants would condemn someone to working in this long term due to discrimination and snotty attitude problems with the movers/shakers. Could leave desperation jobs off resume.
what the hell are you talking about? accounting is one of the degrees i listed up there, and in most top schools, accounting is not offered. economics is the closest thing. If you can get into a top ten, then economics is not useless. The problem is that most don't attend top schools, in which case economics major isn't very profitable. Even worse, these students in less prestigious schools major in liberal arts. While economics is a liberal art, the real world IS ECONOMICS. Accounting (and business, and all commerce, which is what makes money, and hence jobs) are all applied economics. Economics would be the only exception, for it is indeed a liberal art, but at top schools, it provides the economic value of almost an accounting degree, and qualifies you for business jobs that other liberal arts majors or economics major from lower ranked schools are not (because economics is not a very rigorous major and because the difficulty of program varies at each school, top school degrees, which require very high SAT and gpas for admission, would be evidence of high iq, and economics degree from lower ranked schools would not) . Also, lower ranked schools often offer accounting major, which would be preferred over economics major, all things held constant. Economics degree from top 10 school = high iq + applicable knowledge of the real world.
Also, basically what is an useless major is something that isn't quantitative (subjective, opinionated underwater basket weaving that 95 percent of majors are) . The heart of economics is math - minimally at the undergrad level, but still economics is applied mathematics, and is also what explains the real world. Economics is both quant and applicable- VERY APPLICABLE.
your first counter/caveat is correct. if you're smartl, your degree, no matter what what is it in and from where, isn't useless. Look at Bill Gates, Steve jobs, Zuckerberg. All dropped out of college and are the richest men in the nation. Why? Because these guys are genuises. Their IQs are in the 99.99th percentile. For most, this will not work for them. If you are that bright, college is a waste of time.
Um, everything you wrote in this post is what I'm "talking about"^^
I LOVE economics, by the way. You don't have to sell me on the positive attributes of Econ
Oh, and my first caveat wasn't meant to cover people who didn't get a degree at all. But that could be the third caveat: If you are deemed "Bill Gates" smart, you can major in whatever you want, or, preferably don't attend college at all.
what i meant was that those that are high up in management often started off at the bottom as accountants, and thus majored in accounting. How else would they have made the jump between accountants (who "run the company") to high up in the ladder?
I'm with Larry, more CFOs I know have Econ/Business/MBA backgrounds. FAR less started as accountants.
what i meant was that those that are high up in management often started off at the bottom as accountants, and thus majored in accounting. How else would they have made the jump between accountants (who "run the company") to high up in the ladder?
Many, if not most, CEOs have backgrounds in economics, law, engineering, or accounting. Accounting is only one path to managing a company that includes accountants. Also, most have MBAs. If you want an MBA from a top school, you should get the best liberal arts education you can and you should strive for very good grades.
CFOs are more likely to be accountants by training, but I'd be surprised if they are the majority.
The liberal arts were always meant to help people understand the world around them, the world that came before them and how they might influence the world ahead of them. They never were supposed to be job training. That's ridiculous.
What our schools do a very bad job of is teaching kids about the working world. I had no clue. My teachers had no clue. They knew the education market, which is understandable because they were educators. We can't expect teachers who are in one profession to know all professions.
I think the key is having a clear idea what you want to actually DO with your life and know if college is the path toward whatever that is. If you want to be a lawyer, you need college. If you want to own a coffee shop, maybe you do need college, maybe not. If you want to be in the navy, you don't, unless you want to go officer.
Admittedly, I don't know how we can teach kids about that. When I was 18, I had no freaking clue what I wanted to do and I think it's unfair to expect current 18-year olds to know what we did not. What I think we should do is discourage college as the only means of discovery because of its expense. Some kids may need to be exposed to what they DO NOT want to do before they figure out what they do want to do.
Part of the problem is that the world is just so complicated now. Many people hold jobs today that did not exist 10 years ago, ie: "Director of Social Media operations." How can we possibly train people for future jobs that we do not know about? What if we train people to be social media directors and that job disappears by 2025? The best we can do is teach people to be adaptable, which is something the liberal arts should do.
Business tops accounting by a bit, but i think this is due to the large number of business majors, therefore more likely that people from that giant pool of business majors end up as CFO. Economics( BS) drops more than 10 percent from accounting, and even further as econ BA
Also, "MBA" is not a major. We're talking about undergrad here. Many MBAs don't make it, so getting mba is accruing more debt at the slim chance of moving into management.
Business tops accounting by a bit, but i think this is due to the large number of business majors, therefore more likely that people from that giant pool of business majors end up as CFO. Economics( BS) drops more than 10 percent from accounting, and even further as econ BA
Also, "MBA" is not a major. We're talking about undergrad here. Many MBAs don't make it, so getting mba is accruing more debt at the slim chance of moving into management.
How exactly does your link say I'm wrong? It looks to me accounting majors make up 17% of the "100 top earning CFOs" whereas Econ/business-types make up 34%....
Also, your logic is flawed. It really doesn't matter how hard it is to land an entry-level job. That is pretty irrelevant to who makes it to the C-level. Plenty of folks just toil away in accounting departments their entire career without moving into managerial roles, even if those were good jobs that were easier to land at entry-level.
As far as your philosophy on MBAs; I'm well aware MBA is not a major. (Interestingly, the link you provided lists a third of the degrees of "100 top CFOs" as graduate degrees--so we don't know what those folks' undergrad is in. Could've been basket weaving )But business/Econ undergrads tend to take the MBA route, whereas accounting undergrads tend to take to the CPA route (I realize, too, these are not mutually exclusive) And I agree with you that it is not wise to take on debt with the "slim chance" of making into a managerial role--one recommendation is waiting to enter an MBA program until you are already headed towards management. Many solid performers don't need an MBA to move up to the top.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JustCuriouss
some point in the early 90s is when college degree started losing value, and choice of major became more and more important. Do young people today major in economically useless subjects because of ignorance (lack of knowledge about education bubble), or laziness? Somehow intuitively, they must understand that they can't drop 50k on an economically useless major and expect to find a decent job when everyone else is going to college too, right?
Neither. I went to college to learn about a subject I wanted to learn about. No regrets. Ever.
You know, when you set up a poll where all the options boil down to "because people who don't make the decisions I think they should make are stupid", you aren't trying very hard to see multiple viewpoints or solutions. Maybe the liberal arts would help this calcified thinking you have, and I say this as a STEM major.
Yes, yes, yes.....I was fed the same garbage. You can always find someone making big bucks with any degree, but that doesn't make that degree such a good choice for the majority. College is a business, counselors are a form of marketing, a degree is a commodity bought and sold. They try to make you feel guilty if you pick a major for the money, its your life's passion! At the end of the day, do you really think college counselors, instructors, etc suffer pangs of guilt because they might have led a student down a wrong path? Heck, no!
Its all about keeping their own cushy jobs, benefits, pensions, etc. They see students like ducks in a shooting gallery
They are not necessarily bad people.... well, no worse than any salesperson, they have quota's (goals) that must be met to be successful
It's really no different than Car sales or Timeshare sales... a lot of pressure to sell
And as a result they will say anything to get you to enroll
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)But business/Econ undergrads tend to take the MBA route, whereas accounting undergrads tend to take to the CPA route (I realize, too, these are not mutually exclusive) And I agree with you that it is not wise to take on debt with the "slim chance" of making into a managerial role--one recommendation is waiting to enter an MBA program until you are already headed towards management. Many solid performers don't need an MBA to move up to the top.
