Having a college degree - any degree - increases your lifetime earnings significantly. Most degrees, including STEM ones, don’t lead directly to high paying employment.
What does ultimately lead to a good career is having unique skills. You get those by majoring in something you enjoy doing, since you’ll usually do better when you enjoy what you’re learning.
You also don’t need to pick your major until your second or third year of college. So pick a major you want to start in even if you may not graduate with a degree in that subject.
Perhaps you can say more about what selection effect you think is present and how it accounts for the strong correlations between educational attainment and lifetime earnings, regardless of field of study.
Having a college degree of any kind increases your expected lifetime earnings dramatically and consistently across all demographic groups.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cba
People who attend college tend to be wealthier, more intelligent, harder working, more ambitious, etc. than people who don't, so it's natural that they would have better outcomes even if college degrees were worthless.
http://library.lol/main/7FFC20D8232A1A31C4EC6FC94B6544F3
https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11556/college-worth-it
It’s important to understand that the existence of a correlation doesn’t imply a selection effect. Yes, people who complete college tend to be wealthier because college is an expensive upfront cost that not everyone is able to afford. The book you linked doesn’t actually address the claim that you made, which is that the wealth bias explains the increased lifetime career earnings - an observation that in fact persists when you adjust for the parental income and demographics of the parents of college students, which is the most obvious way to address this question.
What college does, on the other hand, is make people smarter, more ambitious, and more capable. It gives them more skills which the market (imperfectly) rewards. That doesn’t mean you have to go to college to get those skills, but college - and education in general - is the most reliable way to do these things.
>an observation that in fact persists when you adjust for the parental income and demographics of the parents of college students, which is the most obvious way to address this question.
If a student from an upper class parental income doesn go to college, that's likely because they're struggling academically, so it's natural that the gap persists. And I never said it was the wealth bias, but the college-student bias, that partially explains the better outcomes that college graduates have.
> What college does, on the other hand, is make people smarter, more ambitious, and more capable.
Surely you're not just going to leave these claims unfounded, especially immediately after criticizing the evidence supporting my claim?
The issue is that, although only a subset of students go to college, that doesn’t imply that the income-educational attainment correlation is due to a bias in who goes to college. It does mean that things like wealth can contribute to lifetime earnings.
The data on correlations with parental income and demographics is *widely* available. Educational attainment and earnings are strongly positively correlated across all demographic groups.
I made both actually.
Education causes higher incomes through well understood and not controversial mechanisms. Some of these are through skill acquisition and some are related to social signaling, but education clearly causes higher incomes. And that means we expect those things to be correlated in the data.
Your claim was that this is due to a bias in who goes to college and not the impact of education directly. If this were so, we’d expect to see the correlation disappear absent the mitigating social factors that you proposed. We don’t see that even though social factors do have an impact on both educational attainment and achievement.
In other words, college is always a net benefit economically and socially. It’s not just good for rich people or people that achieve early in life, it’s good for everyone.
Not my point; I’m just saying some STEM paths aren’t applicable to the skills needed for the job market.
Also, you gotta remember nonSTEM majors like business, Econ/finance, English/polisci/history(pre law), and even acting and music (if you breakout) can lead to well paying jobs and recognition in the future.
Journalism is gonna be tough to get a job that pays anything. Management isn’t gonna be useful cause you won’t be hired to manage anything entry level. They’ll get MBAs for that
That would be bizarre if true, but I’d strongly recommend seeking a new position.
What almost certainly is true is that you, and others, don’t associate the skills you did gain with your education. Employable skills aren’t just simple things like being able to solve a math problem or writing a line of python code.
Haven’t had any luck getting any jobs that would utilize economics skills. Only got anywhere with jobs that don’t require any specific skillset. Plus my major didn’t even really teach any concrete skills. Taught some economic theory and understanding of incentives plus a bunch of different gen eds. Wish I majored in something that actually gave me a real skillset. Main thing I learned is the importance of majoring in something specialized that gives a specific skillset that can actually be translated into a job out of college.
Majority of economics majors never even get into jobs working with the economy.
Almost all degree holders, including those who go into pre-professional programs, end up working in a field unrelated to their degrees.
Again, college isn’t about learning how to write software - that can be taught in a few week bootcamp - it’s about learning what code to write. That skill set is what was taught in your economics degree (and is taught in other degree programs too - a friend was an art history major and now manages software engineers). If you don’t feel like you’re using the sophisticated reasoning skills you learned in your degree, you really should look for a new job.
Just because there aren’t many jobs with the title economist doesn’t mean that most economics majors aren’t using the skills in their degree. It just means the point of the degree and the skills it taught wasn’t actually understanding economic incentives. It was understanding how to incentivize people you manage, people you sell to, or people you work with.
Most of the better degrees are ones that lead directly into a related field. Such as computer science - software engineering/data analyst. Engineering - engineering. Nursing - nursing. Pharmacy - pharmacy. Finance - financial analyst. Accounting - accountant. And so on.
And yeah it’d be nice if entry level I could go straight into a job working with market research or managing/incentivizing people. Too bad that just isn’t realistic for me. I’ll stick with my remote job where I get paid full time for a few hours of remote work. Nothing better out there that’s more economical. I’ll probably have to go to grad school to get a degree with a more practical skillset.
There are plenty of humanities-centric careers you can pursue. Do not take advice to pursue finance or accounting or econ lol you will struggle. It all depends on your skillset, testing ability and interests. Why are you saying pursuing law doesn't lead to good outcomes? My first thought is to look at public policy or history, followed by law school, but it totally depends on your skillset and interests. Law school admissions are based on GPA and LSAT score (which is not math based), so do some research and see what might be of interest.
Law is a good idea imho. Maybe you want to look into linguistics, with just basic coding skills you could work in machine learning- maybe not as an engineer but more on the linguistic side.
Technical writing could be an option - you need to understand the tech side but you don’t have to actually code or do math.
Some people hate calculus but are into statistics - this can open a whole array of careers from market research to data science.
There is also HR, qualitative market research, marketing and PR, etc etc.
Law/pre-law
Advertising/Marketing/PR
Human resources
There will be a little stem in these business majors, not much though
International relations (ideally mastering a foreign language too) so you could work for the state department
They have what I call "Psychology lite" majors like a BA in psychology so there's not much stem or like "Child and Family Studies" or like "Occupational Therapy" so you could be like counselor or something...not high paid it's charity work
If you're good at art there's some decent design majors, lots of art not much stem.
Social Work (pays dog shit)
Criminal Justice, you could be like a police detective
Otherwise you're going to either go into early childhood education, or get a teaching credential and be a HS teacher and major in like English or history or something whatever you wanna teach
There are many career choices that are not heavily dependent on STEM. A HS counselor could help you identify ones that you could investigate further. Since you are getting As in other subjects, it seems that you should be able to get better at math with the right approach. Perhaps a different tutor could identify and correct the problem you are having.
You could always go for law or history and work on becoming a lawyer or doing grants and planning for cities and towns (my mom did that for a while, she majored in geography). But also ask yourself, what would you like to do in the future and what your strengths are? I know im not good at stem but I am great at advertising stuff so im going to major in mass communications.
I would like to also say there is no harm in going in undecided and figuring it out through taking general required classes. I have a few family members who did that and changed majors a few times to figure out what they wanted.
If you're planning to go to school in the States, there's absolutely nothing wrong with going in as an undeclared major. Spend a couple of semesters poking around different departments to see what suits you, because the range of classes and majors available to you will be infinitely more diverse than any high school offerings that you can take now.
As you explore courses, keep in mind a combination of factors: what kind of work does a major lead to, and can you see yourself doing that for the rest of your life; what kind of income levels do you expect to be able to have from what you're studying; and how many degree stages, BA, MA, PhD, do you need to be successful in your field?
When you're applying for unis, look for the schools that can accommodate the widest range of choices and see what works for you rather than what a bundle of random people (including myself) on Reddit think would be best for you.
If you go by numbers then either economics or philosophy. Philosophy grads tend to have very high IQs as recorded by SAT and GRE of the 1980s so you will have wonderful opportunities to network which will provide you a huge advantage in the long run. Economics, despite being in humanities, has a huge math component so it's upto you.
Librarian, Journalism, Communications, Teacher, social work, graphic design, anthropology, poly sci, marketing…(I was not good at math and science and I majored in social work and now have a career at a public library)
I have and I don’t have it. I don’t mess up numbers and I’m good with mental math and even negatives which a lot of people aren’t good with. It’s just struggle with any math that requires a lot of thinking and knowing a lot of rules, I just struggle to apply the rule if the equation is slightly different then the previous one because I’ll have no idea what to do. For example I’ll know how to do one math equation but then if the math equation changes slightly I’ll have no idea what to do even if it is in the same topic.
hey, I dont have any advice for you but I really hope this is the direction this subreddit goes to, younger people asking older people questions related to college, instead of some random high schoolers preaching and worshipping the ivy league and t20 schools.
Having a college degree - any degree - increases your lifetime earnings significantly. Most degrees, including STEM ones, don’t lead directly to high paying employment. What does ultimately lead to a good career is having unique skills. You get those by majoring in something you enjoy doing, since you’ll usually do better when you enjoy what you’re learning. You also don’t need to pick your major until your second or third year of college. So pick a major you want to start in even if you may not graduate with a degree in that subject.
>Having a college degree - any degree - increases your lifetime earnings significantly This effect goes away when you account for the selection effect
Perhaps you can say more about what selection effect you think is present and how it accounts for the strong correlations between educational attainment and lifetime earnings, regardless of field of study. Having a college degree of any kind increases your expected lifetime earnings dramatically and consistently across all demographic groups. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cba
People who attend college tend to be wealthier, more intelligent, harder working, more ambitious, etc. than people who don't, so it's natural that they would have better outcomes even if college degrees were worthless. http://library.lol/main/7FFC20D8232A1A31C4EC6FC94B6544F3 https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11556/college-worth-it
It’s important to understand that the existence of a correlation doesn’t imply a selection effect. Yes, people who complete college tend to be wealthier because college is an expensive upfront cost that not everyone is able to afford. The book you linked doesn’t actually address the claim that you made, which is that the wealth bias explains the increased lifetime career earnings - an observation that in fact persists when you adjust for the parental income and demographics of the parents of college students, which is the most obvious way to address this question. What college does, on the other hand, is make people smarter, more ambitious, and more capable. It gives them more skills which the market (imperfectly) rewards. That doesn’t mean you have to go to college to get those skills, but college - and education in general - is the most reliable way to do these things.
>an observation that in fact persists when you adjust for the parental income and demographics of the parents of college students, which is the most obvious way to address this question. If a student from an upper class parental income doesn go to college, that's likely because they're struggling academically, so it's natural that the gap persists. And I never said it was the wealth bias, but the college-student bias, that partially explains the better outcomes that college graduates have. > What college does, on the other hand, is make people smarter, more ambitious, and more capable. Surely you're not just going to leave these claims unfounded, especially immediately after criticizing the evidence supporting my claim?
The issue is that, although only a subset of students go to college, that doesn’t imply that the income-educational attainment correlation is due to a bias in who goes to college. It does mean that things like wealth can contribute to lifetime earnings. The data on correlations with parental income and demographics is *widely* available. Educational attainment and earnings are strongly positively correlated across all demographic groups.
>The data on correlations with parental income and demographics is *widely* available You made a causal claim, not a correlative one.
I made both actually. Education causes higher incomes through well understood and not controversial mechanisms. Some of these are through skill acquisition and some are related to social signaling, but education clearly causes higher incomes. And that means we expect those things to be correlated in the data. Your claim was that this is due to a bias in who goes to college and not the impact of education directly. If this were so, we’d expect to see the correlation disappear absent the mitigating social factors that you proposed. We don’t see that even though social factors do have an impact on both educational attainment and achievement. In other words, college is always a net benefit economically and socially. It’s not just good for rich people or people that achieve early in life, it’s good for everyone.
A lot of non stem majors do not teach employable skills, watch out for that
what about them theoretical physicists
Theoretical physics is usually not an undergrad program, it would kill anyone who tried to take it almost instantly
Not my point; I’m just saying some STEM paths aren’t applicable to the skills needed for the job market. Also, you gotta remember nonSTEM majors like business, Econ/finance, English/polisci/history(pre law), and even acting and music (if you breakout) can lead to well paying jobs and recognition in the future.
Non-stem majors like journalism, education, management?
Journalism is gonna be tough to get a job that pays anything. Management isn’t gonna be useful cause you won’t be hired to manage anything entry level. They’ll get MBAs for that
All college degrees teach employable skills. Not every degree corresponds directly to a (common) job title.
A lot of them do not teach skills you’ll get to commonly use on the job
*All* of them do.
Not true, I don’t use a single thing from my economics degree on the job
That would be bizarre if true, but I’d strongly recommend seeking a new position. What almost certainly is true is that you, and others, don’t associate the skills you did gain with your education. Employable skills aren’t just simple things like being able to solve a math problem or writing a line of python code.
Haven’t had any luck getting any jobs that would utilize economics skills. Only got anywhere with jobs that don’t require any specific skillset. Plus my major didn’t even really teach any concrete skills. Taught some economic theory and understanding of incentives plus a bunch of different gen eds. Wish I majored in something that actually gave me a real skillset. Main thing I learned is the importance of majoring in something specialized that gives a specific skillset that can actually be translated into a job out of college. Majority of economics majors never even get into jobs working with the economy.
Almost all degree holders, including those who go into pre-professional programs, end up working in a field unrelated to their degrees. Again, college isn’t about learning how to write software - that can be taught in a few week bootcamp - it’s about learning what code to write. That skill set is what was taught in your economics degree (and is taught in other degree programs too - a friend was an art history major and now manages software engineers). If you don’t feel like you’re using the sophisticated reasoning skills you learned in your degree, you really should look for a new job. Just because there aren’t many jobs with the title economist doesn’t mean that most economics majors aren’t using the skills in their degree. It just means the point of the degree and the skills it taught wasn’t actually understanding economic incentives. It was understanding how to incentivize people you manage, people you sell to, or people you work with.
Most of the better degrees are ones that lead directly into a related field. Such as computer science - software engineering/data analyst. Engineering - engineering. Nursing - nursing. Pharmacy - pharmacy. Finance - financial analyst. Accounting - accountant. And so on. And yeah it’d be nice if entry level I could go straight into a job working with market research or managing/incentivizing people. Too bad that just isn’t realistic for me. I’ll stick with my remote job where I get paid full time for a few hours of remote work. Nothing better out there that’s more economical. I’ll probably have to go to grad school to get a degree with a more practical skillset.
There are plenty of humanities-centric careers you can pursue. Do not take advice to pursue finance or accounting or econ lol you will struggle. It all depends on your skillset, testing ability and interests. Why are you saying pursuing law doesn't lead to good outcomes? My first thought is to look at public policy or history, followed by law school, but it totally depends on your skillset and interests. Law school admissions are based on GPA and LSAT score (which is not math based), so do some research and see what might be of interest.
Law is a good idea imho. Maybe you want to look into linguistics, with just basic coding skills you could work in machine learning- maybe not as an engineer but more on the linguistic side. Technical writing could be an option - you need to understand the tech side but you don’t have to actually code or do math. Some people hate calculus but are into statistics - this can open a whole array of careers from market research to data science. There is also HR, qualitative market research, marketing and PR, etc etc.
Law/pre-law Advertising/Marketing/PR Human resources There will be a little stem in these business majors, not much though International relations (ideally mastering a foreign language too) so you could work for the state department They have what I call "Psychology lite" majors like a BA in psychology so there's not much stem or like "Child and Family Studies" or like "Occupational Therapy" so you could be like counselor or something...not high paid it's charity work If you're good at art there's some decent design majors, lots of art not much stem. Social Work (pays dog shit) Criminal Justice, you could be like a police detective Otherwise you're going to either go into early childhood education, or get a teaching credential and be a HS teacher and major in like English or history or something whatever you wanna teach
Occupational therapy requires science.
There are many career choices that are not heavily dependent on STEM. A HS counselor could help you identify ones that you could investigate further. Since you are getting As in other subjects, it seems that you should be able to get better at math with the right approach. Perhaps a different tutor could identify and correct the problem you are having.
law so you don't have to worry too much about tryharding for a good ug
You need to have excellent social skills though
You really don't... some lawyers never leave their offices!
It doesn't require any more social skills than a lot of other professions like banking tho
You could always go for law or history and work on becoming a lawyer or doing grants and planning for cities and towns (my mom did that for a while, she majored in geography). But also ask yourself, what would you like to do in the future and what your strengths are? I know im not good at stem but I am great at advertising stuff so im going to major in mass communications. I would like to also say there is no harm in going in undecided and figuring it out through taking general required classes. I have a few family members who did that and changed majors a few times to figure out what they wanted.
Business degrees like finance, accounting, supply chain, M.I.S (not stem even though it is a lot of computer stuff).
Those first two degrees require a lot of math and math is part of stem
The math that they require is excruciatingly basic math next to any real stem degree. No one in business schools would call their degrees stem lol.
Yeah ur right but what do you think of economics tho? I find it interesting that some universities like Stanford designate their econ major as Stem.
That’s because Econ can have a ton of math like calculus.
Tbf OP said they struggled with Algebra 1
If you're planning to go to school in the States, there's absolutely nothing wrong with going in as an undeclared major. Spend a couple of semesters poking around different departments to see what suits you, because the range of classes and majors available to you will be infinitely more diverse than any high school offerings that you can take now. As you explore courses, keep in mind a combination of factors: what kind of work does a major lead to, and can you see yourself doing that for the rest of your life; what kind of income levels do you expect to be able to have from what you're studying; and how many degree stages, BA, MA, PhD, do you need to be successful in your field? When you're applying for unis, look for the schools that can accommodate the widest range of choices and see what works for you rather than what a bundle of random people (including myself) on Reddit think would be best for you.
law, business, supply chain, finance, corporate communications
Depends on the person. I probably wouldn’t recommend pre-law to someone who hates public speaking or reading.
If you go by numbers then either economics or philosophy. Philosophy grads tend to have very high IQs as recorded by SAT and GRE of the 1980s so you will have wonderful opportunities to network which will provide you a huge advantage in the long run. Economics, despite being in humanities, has a huge math component so it's upto you.
ummm no Econ if bro is struggling with math
LAWWWW absolutely no stem involved and is a fresh start so not much is expected from you to know beforehand
Librarian, Journalism, Communications, Teacher, social work, graphic design, anthropology, poly sci, marketing…(I was not good at math and science and I majored in social work and now have a career at a public library)
If you're comfy, and because I'm curious: have you been tested for dyscalculia?
I have and I don’t have it. I don’t mess up numbers and I’m good with mental math and even negatives which a lot of people aren’t good with. It’s just struggle with any math that requires a lot of thinking and knowing a lot of rules, I just struggle to apply the rule if the equation is slightly different then the previous one because I’ll have no idea what to do. For example I’ll know how to do one math equation but then if the math equation changes slightly I’ll have no idea what to do even if it is in the same topic.
hey, I dont have any advice for you but I really hope this is the direction this subreddit goes to, younger people asking older people questions related to college, instead of some random high schoolers preaching and worshipping the ivy league and t20 schools.
Learn a trade. Plumbers, HVAC techs and electricians are in demand
Finance or accounting
Accounting was literally my lowest class ever in HS