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- I'm a history professor who teaches a careers class for history majors.
- I've found students are focused on the belief that your major and your future career are linked.
- Students should choose a major with classes they enjoy and can excel in.
As a college professor, I spend a lot of my time helping young people explore their interests, hone their skills, and prepare for the future. As a professor of history, I also spend a lot of time reassuring students — and their parents, indirectly — that choosing a non-STEM major won't condemn them to a life of poverty. Though I know that's true, this often feels like a losing battle.
Several years ago I created a class at my regional public university in the Midwest for history majors to explore career options. To my surprise, students in the class talked less about future careers and more about the psychological weight of choosing a college major.
After countless discussions about the stress of picking a major, I now emphasize a few things I think college students — and their parents — should keep in mind when choosing a major.
Your college major and your career are less connected than you may think
Much of the pressure and anxiety about choosing a major comes from feeling like you have to decide on a career path at an age when you're still learning who you are. This pressure is unnecessary and often counterproductive. But I understand strong currents are pulling students to think about a college major strictly through the lens of a future career.
Many colleges push for "direct entry" programs where students enroll in a specific major when they apply. Colleges want students in a degree program as quickly as possible because studies suggest this can increase a student's sense of belonging and even their likelihood of graduating. That says more about what's good for colleges than what's best for students — but it also makes 17-year-olds feel like they need to choose a career path at the same time they're picking an outfit for their high-school homecoming.
I'm a good example. I've devoted my career to teaching and writing about history. But at 16 I was planning to study chemistry and become a food scientist. No disrespect to food scientists, but I would've been profoundly unhappy clocking into a lab every day to work on new kinds of margarine.
Choosing a major need not be so stressful. The key is to accept that there's less connection than you might think between a student's major and their long-term career path.
I require students in my career-planning class to ask family and friends with college degrees about their majors and subsequent career paths. Inevitably, students find serendipity in real-world routes through the workforce after college — for example, someone majored in pharmacy science but found they enjoyed working in human resources.
Free from the idea that you're choosing a career when you're choosing a major, you can choose based on your interests and the classes where you excel.
Choose a major with classes you can excel in
Avoid choosing a major that could increase your risk of failing out of college. Leaving college with no degree and a lot of debt is the worst-case scenario; you would've been better off never going to college. But, of course, you can't predict failure.
You do control your major, though, and it's worth thinking about choosing one that minimizes your risk of ending up in the "some college, no degree" category.
Many students focus solely on the average starting salaries for graduates with a particular major. But if chasing a high salary leads you to a major where you struggle in classes, you increase your risk of joining the group of students who begin college but never graduate.
The reasons students leave college without graduating vary. Some are tragic and unavoidable: A parent gets sick and someone needs to drive them to dialysis. Some are silly: A student quits school to focus on getting on a reality-TV show. These are real — but rare — cases.
More common, in my experience, is something like this: A student is joylessly struggling through organic chemistry or intro to computer science. Having been pushed toward a STEM major since middle school, they see failing the class as not just a setback but an existential crisis.
Nonvocational or non-STEM majors are described as risky because you risk low earnings after college. But another way majors can be risky is if they put you at risk of failure before graduation. By choosing a major based on your interests and skills, you lower this risk.