{"id":42085,"date":"2018-01-14T14:16:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-14T22:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=42085"},"modified":"2018-01-14T14:16:40","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T22:16:40","slug":"study-students-leave-hard-majors-no-kidding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/study-students-leave-hard-majors-no-kidding\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Students leave hard majors. No kidding!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen it far more times than I can count: a kid walks onto campus, picks a tough STEM major like Engineering, then, after seeing he can\u2019t cut it there, switches over to something less challenging (but still hard) like Chemistry or Pre-Med. Then after flunking those classes, changes major again and again, until finally getting a degree in Theatre or African Studies or Gender Studies or well, something not exactly associated with high difficulty\u2026or pay.<\/p>\n

I suppose this sort of thing has always happened, but I worry that today\u2019s \u201ctake a huge loan for a college degree\u201d system of education is creating far more victims of higher education than there used to be. Toss in those endless \u201cif you\u2019re female, we\u2019ll give you extra to go into STEM because males and females are the same\u201d programs and it only adds to the issues here as I\u2019ve seen many females caught in this trap due to those programs.<\/p>\n

Changing your major adds a year, or two, or even three to your degree programs. Even if you don\u2019t fail your classes, your new major probably won\u2019t even accept the old major\u2019s courses except as electives\u2026an extra few years taken to get a degree can easily add up to another $100,000 to the cost of the degree once loans, interest on loans, and lost income are factored in.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I\u2019ve seen students downgrade their degree many times, so I don\u2019t really need a study to tell me what I already know: students who major in African Studies on day 1 of college generally don\u2019t switch over to Engineering nearly as often as the other way around.<\/p>\n

All that said, I want to talk a bit about a study showing the obvious, because it reveals some things less obvious:<\/p>\n

Graduates with math degrees fare well on the job market, but a greater share of students leave the major than any other, new federal data show.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

I won\u2019t crow much about my own discipline being the one most likely to chase away students, it\u2019s well known, and I like job security. In several ways, mathematics is actually an easy discipline: you don\u2019t have to write papers, reading assignments are a few pages at most, and you usually don\u2019t even have homework. All you need to do in mathematics is understand\u2026if you don\u2019t understand what\u2019s being said in the courses, you change your major. I always felt badly for my friends in other degree programs, spending hours in lab work or writing extensive papers or other unpleasant things, where all I ever had to do was actually follow the conversations my professors would (attempt to) have with me.<\/p>\n

\u2026students who started out in mathematics and the natural sciences are likelier than others to switch fields,<\/em><\/p>\n

–seriously, who didn\u2019t know this already?<\/em><\/p>\n

Around 33% of all students change their major at least once. It\u2019s more like 52% for those who start in math. What\u2019s funny about this study is the author is puzzled at the bleeding obvious:<\/p>\n

What does it mean that math majors are likelier to leave their major than students in other fields? Given the marketplace demand for math majors (and students in other STEM fields), is it a problem that STEM majors are abandoning their majors at a greater rate than other students are?<\/em><\/p>\n

It really is sad that we as a people are so ignorant of basic economics that there\u2019s a question of how it can be that the most profitable fields are also the ones people are least likely to be able to do. It\u2019s a pretty big reveal that this question is being asked, because it displays the common ignorance so well.<\/p>\n

An educationist in our government is wheeled in to address this \u201cproblem:\u201d<\/p>\n

Given employers’ strong demand for math majors and other students with strong quantitative skills, and by extension the desire among students to pursue such majors, it’s essential that educators seek ways to make those fields less off-putting<\/strong> to students — and not by reducing rigor, Venit said.<\/em><\/p>\n

—emphasis added<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s so laughable that they can be so puzzled by the concept that \u201crare skills tend to be more valuable\u201d that they think the issue is the subject matter is, and I chuckled when I read it, \u201coff-putting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah, that\u2019s the problem. They\u2019re probably also puzzled why plumbers make so much, and have no idea working with raw sewage is off-putting, too.<\/p>\n

I reckon everyone who has seen a great pianist or incredible singer perform has thought \u201cgee, I could do that, too, except it\u2019s so off-putting.\u201d Where\u2019s the great push to make courses in singing or piano more accessible?<\/p>\n

Professional basketball players make great money\u2026why is there no push to make the game less \u201coff-putting.\u201d You, gentle reader, need to realize this is how utterly lost our government-sponsored Educationists are when it comes to understanding of how the world works, and should keep this in mind before subjecting your children to government-style education.<\/p>\n

For all my amusement at their confusion and ignorance here, something is said that is very relevant:<\/p>\n

Colleges and universities also should strive, Venit said, to create desirable “off-ramps” for students who get waylaid from their original academic goal…<\/em><\/p>\n

Our higher education system really does need to be more able to have students change their major, there\u2019s simply too much money involved not to provide better options for students who want to change.<\/p>\n

Thing is, this problem has been well known for decades\u2026and still nothing has been done. It\u2019s basically unsolvable, and allow me to explain why:<\/p>\n

Students are paying ridiculous amounts of money to get their degree, and as long as those dollar signs are there, students are going to go for the degrees most likely to pay back the cost of getting a degree\u2026and they\u2019re always going to want to take the shortest path to get that well-paying degree.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take that previous paragraph as axiomatic: just assume it\u2019s all true.<\/p>\n

Any \u201coff-ramp\u201d path, will, obviously, be slower than a student taking a direct path\u2014we already have those off-ramps, that\u2019s how students can put two years into one degree, change degree, and not necessarily be two years behind\u2026a student could optimize their off-ramp path, but any such optimization will mean they\u2019re not taking the shortest possible path.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: if you spend three years studying to be an astrophysicist, and then decide you want to herd goats instead, the only way you won\u2019t have wasted 3 years of your life is if some of those courses you took for astrophysics actually have material equally useful for goatherding\u2026and you wouldn\u2019t take those courses because those courses (eg, Gender Studies) are just as useless for astrophysics\u2026you won\u2019t take such courses because you were taking the shortest possible path to your astrophysics degree.<\/p>\n

The only solution here is to destroy one of the axioms, the part about \u201cridiculous amounts of money.\u201d There really was a time when higher education was cheap, and that time was before the student loan scam. We need to get rid of that, and then we won\u2019t have people spending the rest of their lives in debt slavery for making a very common mistake when they were 18 years old: picking an inappropriate major.<\/p>\n

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve seen it far more times than I can count: a kid walks onto campus, picks a tough STEM major like Engineering, then, after seeing he can\u2019t cut it there, switches over to something less challenging (but still hard) like Chemistry or Pre-Med. Then after flunking those classes, changes major again and again, until finally […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":42086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[32606],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-42085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-majors"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStudy: Students leave hard majors. 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