why job hungry students choose useless majors

Last week, I linked to data showing that the growth degrees awarded has often come from non-vocational areas (NVA), such as the humanities. This has lead some folks, like Arnold Kling, to conjecture that this is a result of anti-profit mentalities among students.

You can test that hypothesis. The charts are from a UCLA report called The American Freshman: Thirty Year Trends – 1966-1996. It shows, using a yearly survey of freshmen, that college students are becoming more interested in making money. In 1971, about 50% went to college to make money. In the 1990s, it’s about 70%. Similarly, modern college students are more interested in financial stability, not philosophical issues. I haven’t been able to find more recent data, but I’d be surprised if that trend reversed. Also, more recent UCLA data from the 2000s shows that around 60% to 70% of college students, depending on the question, want more job career advice from their college.

Colleges are filled with people who are there because they think it will lead to jobs. So, then, why are job hungry students flooding non-vocational areas? The explanation is fairly simple.”Good” jobs require college degrees as a test of ability and emotional maturity (being able to sit and do work), even if the job itself requires no college level skills. So people go to college to avoid service sector and manual work. But not everyone has the academic ability or desire for the professional tracks (business, education, health) or the sciences/engineering. So they need something, which turns out to be these other areas. Yes, some people love Milton, but most humanities majors are there because they mildly enjoy the topic and need to get a degree. We need a way for people to credential themselves without taking on the massive un-payable debt associated with the modern humanities degree.

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