A Major Choice: Decision comes down to interests, finances

Corey Hollis knows when a student isn’t interested in their major.

Grades are low, but they keep retaking the required classes. Maybe their parents will only pay for them to be in that major. Maybe they think their only job options are lawyer or doctor, she said.

Fresh out of high school, many students pick a major because of their notion of what it is and what it can do for them – not what they would enjoy, she said.

It’s a sight she sees often as the director of UCLA College Academic Counseling.

“It’s kind of like being in an abusive relationship,” Hollis said. “(Your major) beats you up, and you keep going back for more.”

Most of these students, however, eventually end up sticking with a major they choose based on personal preference – instead of salary expectation or outside influence, according to a Daily Bruin/UCLA Department of Statistics survey conducted Feb. 28 to March 6.

How and why students choose undergraduate majors is increasingly at the center of a vigorous debate about the value of a college education.

With graduating college seniors facing greater job obstacles than ever, many point to the need for an increased emphasis on STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – majors to ensure students profitable careers that match their undergraduate experience.

The alternative, according to experts, is students who choose humanities and social science majors and could end up in careers that are low-paying and have little to do with what they studied in college.

Though most undergraduate students go against this view by not considering future salary when choosing a major, they do weigh finances when it comes to deciding whether to attend college – a trend seen across the nation.

 

The push for STEM

Paul Hill, the president and co-founder of Job Search Intelligence, a company self-described as a “compensation data machine,”  makes his living by calculating and analyzing salary data for other companies.

Hill approached the Bruin with his company’s data, because he said he is concerned about what students are being told about job options on the market.

“(Students) anticipate they won’t fail, regardless of the path they take,” Hill said. “This goes against the facts.”

Based on his company’s data analysis, there are currently not enough positions to accommodate humanities and social science students, who are flooding the job market.

He said, however, it’s finding a job is a “slam dunk” for students with STEM backgrounds.

Simply put, there are more technology jobs than ever.

There has been an economic and public policy push in recent years to increase the number of STEM students to meet this growing field, including President Barack Obama mentioning STEM education in his State of the Union address. As with any job that requires a highly specialized skill-set, like those taught in STEM majors, there is a greater demand for – and willingness to compensate – applicants who meet the criteria, said Erkki Corpus, a UCLA Engineering counselor.

In their first year out of college, about 53 percent of English students will be employed, compared with about 64 percent of computer science students and 70 percent of nursing students, according to Job Search Intelligence data.

These figures may seem similar, but it comes down to the type of employment these students are receiving.

Communication students are often working as secretaries and assistants their first year out, with an average salary of $28,000. Other humanities and social science students find jobs in restaurant service or retail, according to Job Search Intelligence data.

But in their first year out of college, an average chemistry student could be working as a materials scientist, and a computer science student will likely be a software developer – both making around $40,000 or more.

Tricia McKay, who graduated in September 2011 with a B.S. in anthropology, said employers rarely understand the distinct skill-set she carries with her degree – such as an understanding of how to relate to people.

Employers, however, don’t often confuse the skill-set of an accounting or economics student, she said.

“It’s kind of hard to just give someone your resume and hope they understand (your skills),” McKay said.

McKay, who started college at the start of the recession in 2008, said she doesn’t regret her major, but she just doesn’t feel a bachelor’s degree is worth as much anymore.

It was hard to find a job out of college. She stumbled into a job as an office manager for her brother-in-law’s construction company, and plans to go back to graduate school for anthropology.

There’s one piece of advice McKay wishes she had received during her time at UCLA: choose a major that you love, and a minor that will get you a job.

 

Personal preference over salary

But even with pressure to choose a major based on salary or job prospects, nearly all UCLA undergraduates surveyed are choosing their major based on personal preference, according to the Daily Bruin/UCLA Department of Statistics survey.

Interest in the field and future career goals came in as a close second and third. Expected salary and outside influence from parents, teachers and family members trailed slowly behind.

Despite increased national attention on a profitable STEM education, the proportion of students coming to college with interest in STEM majors has not changed over the decades – only about one-third, said Kevin Eagan, a professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and assistant director of researchfor the Higher Education Research Institute.

“If students were really choosing their majors focused only on career outcomes, we would see significant erosion of the percent of students choosing majors that are less closely tied to the market,” Eagan said.

The top 15 list of most popular UCLA majors reflect students’ attitudes. Political science and psychology – two fields that students responding to the survey ranked as having fewer job prospects than STEM majors – have consistently been the two most popular majors at UCLA.

Students rated, on the other hand, computer science as the major with the best shot of getting a career out of college. Yet, computer science has not made the top 15 list since the 2009-2010 school year.

Much of this emphasis on personal preference comes down to students’ optimism about their future. More than 90 percent of students are expecting a job their first year after graduating UCLA, regardless of major, according to the survey.

Demi Pace made the choice on her own to study theater at UCLA. The first-year student said she is lucky that her family is supportive of her major choice, because theater is her passion.

While she said she sometimes has a hard time with people who scoff at studying the arts, she has learned to shake it off.

“Art is an important part of society,” Pace said. “There are always going to be jobs.”

A well-rounded education, regardless of major, can provide students with the critical thinking and analysis skills that attract employers, said Hollis, the director of counseling.

Students who choose a major they are interested in for its educational value will likely be more successful, and it may lead students down certain pathways to careers, Hollis said.

“We tell most students that careers aren’t major-specific,” she said.

There are a number of opportunities available – internships, research, networking – that are often more critical to employers than major, said Kathy Sims, director of the UCLA Career Center.

 

College for an education or a job?

While students may be choosing interest over salary when it comes to major, they aren’t entirely ignoring the current job market.

In the midst of rising tuition costs and increasing dependence on loans to finance an education, experts are starting to see that more often than not, finances are weighing heavily on the minds of students entering universities.

The trend is less evident in major choice but comes out strongly when students are choosing whether or not to attend college, said Eagan, the education and information sciences professor.

The importance of an education has been a reason for attending college for most students since the 1970s, around the time the Higher Education Research Institute began administering its annual survey of incoming college freshman. What has changed in the past 35 to 40 years is the role making money plays on that decision, Eagan said.

The number of students coming to college to get a job has hovered consistently around 70 percent since the 1970s. But that number jumped up to 85 percent in 2008 – right around the start of the national recession – and has yet to decrease.

At UCLA, undergraduates who did prioritize salary when selecting a major were more likely to have been receiving financial aid or loans, according to the Bruin survey.

Second-year Sergio Davila started out as an applied linguistics major, but switched to the linguistics and computer science major at the beginning of this year because of his financial situation. Davila is on financial aid and has taken out loans to get through college.

His primary interest is in linguistics, but he plans to use the computer science aspect of the major to find a job in technology – possibly working with Google search and Siri voice recognition programs.

“I wanted to increase my chances of paying off loans after college (by switching majors),” Davila said.

The debate about the importance of majors and a college education will likely persist in the current economy. But at the end of the day, Hollis said a student should think about where they want to be 10 years from now and let that guide them in their major choice – regardless of whether that takes them to North Campus or South Campus.