Choosing a College Major Using 3 Paths as a Starting Point Guide (Podcast Version)

[Alpha]

I've heard of distinction without a difference, but this seems almost the opposite. Narrowing of categorization without a purpose.

I am similarly unclear as to why there is a need to place all these degrees into categories.  And if, for some reason, categories are required, then why these particular categories?    If nothing else, the "exceptions to the rule" outnumber the business degrees, at least nominally.  I don't think that this really simplifies anyone's choice of college major.

[freeloader]

I guess what I'm getting at is when do employers on places such as Indeed.com request employees have certain liberal arts degrees for certain jobs, and when do they pay a premium for those degrees?

To your first point, outside of tightly regulated professions, you can theoretically do any job with any degree (or no degree). A relevant degree just increases (at least hopefully) the likelihood that you are able to get a job in a particular field.  

I do understand where you are coming from in regards to the skills that employers are seeking.  I used to work in museums and a typical job posting for someone in a museum-y job (as opposed to the business, computer, or similar functions within a museum) might call for a degree in history, anthropology, art history, education, or a closely related field.  The goal is to hire people who can think about people in time interacting with objects and to be able to share that understanding with others.  There is not a single discipline which teaches that; indeed, given the interdisciplinary nature of public history and museum studies graduate programs, it is arguable that none of the traditional undergraduate disciplines teaches that skill set.

I suppose I would object to an employer-driven conceptualization of academic disciplines. Different disciplines typically use different methodological approaches of inquiry.  A sociologist, historian, social psychologist, anthropologist, economist, and philosopher can all look at the exact same subject and apply their own methodologies to it. They may come up with similar conclusions or they may be quite different.  The fact that an employer may view the students trained by these different academics as substantially interchangeable does not mean that the disciplines, their methodologies, or practitioners are interchangeable. 

One final thought (and a partial defense of you, LevelUP): I get the impression that most undergraduates have very little understanding of the theory and methods of the disciplines they are studying. Sure, they may have a methods class or two in their degree but could they actually do substantial research in the discipline?  No, that’s why we have graduate school.  The effect may well be that graduates in social sciences and humanities disciplines have degrees that are largely generic. Many of the core skills (read a paper, digest it, explain it, summarize it in writing, apply it as part of a broader argument) are universal and largely interchangeable. 

[LevelUP]

I didn't see math, which would fall under liberal arts. Math and physics are definitely not computer science or IT.

While you are right, math is considered liberal arts. Employers will often list math as a requirement for jobs, along with computer science.

Real-life examples from Indeed.com:

Product Strategist
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Math, Economics, Finance, Technical Engineering, or a related quantitative field

Category Manager-South Central
Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Information Management, Engineering, Mathematics or similar field

Data Scientist
Degree must be in Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Applied Statistics, Machine Learning, Data Science, Operations Research, or Computer Science.

I'm not getting why healthcare and engineering are listed as exceptions and not as main degree options. The healthcare category is one of the most popular categories. There are more people earning healthcare degrees than humanities degrees.

Those degrees are specialist-type degrees. If you get a degree in nursing, it would be odd to go to work at an insurance company right after college. These degrees are not better or worse, just listed separately as options.

Now if you take my idea further, you get to it not mattering at all what degree you have.

https://www.businessinsider.com/college-...oyee2018-2

[sanantone]

I'm not getting why healthcare and engineering are listed as exceptions and not as main degree options. The healthcare category is one of the most popular categories. There are more people earning healthcare degrees than humanities degrees.

Those degrees are specialist-type degrees. If you get a degree in nursing, it would be odd to go to work at an insurance company right after college. These degrees are not better or worse, just listed separately as options.

Now if you take my idea further, you get to it not mattering at all what degree you have.

https://www.businessinsider.com/college-...oyee2018-2

For licensed fields or those in which most employers require a certification, your major matters. You can't become a counseling, school, or clinical psychologist with a sociology degree. 

For someone reason, you separated math even though it's a liberal art. Statistics, which is a sub-field of mathematics, often doesn't require a math or statistics degree. Some statistician positions specifically request social science degrees. 

Many liberal arts fields are not interchangeable. Someone with a physics degree won't be prepared to be a biologist and vice versa. Could you become a caseworker with an economics degree? It's not preferred, but many agencies will be desperate enough to hire you. Will the government hire you as a sociologist or research psychologist with an economics degree? Probably not.

Unlicensed healthcare fields don't always require a specific degree. There are people working in public health without public health degrees. 

Education: My state doesn't even offer undergraduate education degrees, for the most part. You choose a specific major and select the teacher preparation track.

Even though becoming a licensed professional engineer is an option, it's possible to become an engineer without an engineering degree. There are even licensing pathways for those without engineering degrees. 

There are fields that are in a gray area, such as accounting. Technically, you don't need an accounting degree to become an accountant or auditor. You don't even need an accounting degree to become a CPA. However, you usually will need a lot of accounting coursework.

[freeloader]

Real-life examples from Indeed.com:

Product Strategist
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Math, Economics, Finance, Technical Engineering, or a related quantitative field

Category Manager-South Central
Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Information Management, Engineering, Mathematics or similar field

Data Scientist
Degree must be in Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Applied Statistics, Machine Learning, Data Science, Operations Research, or Computer Science.

Per your schema, LevelUP:

Job 1: economics and math (liberal arts), CS (computer), finance (business)

Job 2: math (liberal arts), CS (computers), information management (often, business), business (well, business)

Job 3: math (liberal arts), CS (computers)

So, 2 out of the 3 jobs you cited will accept a major from any of your three categories. The third will take a degree in operations research or data science, interdisciplinary fields that often draw on and are used by business; let’s call them business adjacent fields. 

Per your own references, the categories you have created are pretty darn arbitrary and, even when viewed from an employment perspective, are not terribly meaningful.  Econ major yes, English major no. Finance major yes, leadership major no.  Math major yes, philosophy major no. 

Your original point seemed to be that a perspective student should pick one of the three grand divisions you created and that any degree from the category would be substantially equal. But, your own examples seem to prove quite the opposite.

[carrythenothing]

This thread in xkcd comics

• Purity: https://xkcd.com/435/
  
• Research Areas by Size and Countedness: https://xkcd.com/1991/
  

[rachel83az]

This thread in xkcd comics

• Purity: https://xkcd.com/435/
  
• Research Areas by Size and Countedness: https://xkcd.com/1991/
  

Combine with https://xkcd.com/2466/ "In Your Classroom".

[Alpha]

Perhaps another way to think about it is that LevelUp is only doing what every state university does, they're dividing up their school into various sorts of divisions by grouping subject areas.  Humanities, Liberal Arts, Business and on and on.  You can make the divisions as few or as many as you like.  I've never worked in Higher Education but I imagine that these divisions serve primarily administrative purposes.  I don't think that there's anything about Sociology that requires Anthropology to be just down the hall.  But as an organization, the university has an easier time of it if they're grouped together.  One of the things that some schools are doing is they're including on the departmental websites some type of listing or discussion of the sorts of jobs that one might seek once the degree is earned.  I think it's fair to highlight the fact that in today's world there's some increased expectation that a degree will lead the newly minted graduate to some type of career.  There's nothing wrong with dividing up degrees into categories.  Check out Don McMillan's way of dividing them up
The Career Venn Diagram - Comedy in Place (E61) - YouTube

[LevelUP]

Version 2.0 of There Are Only 3 College Degrees has been released.

I incorporated STEM types of degrees.

[sanantone]

You're not any more pigeonholed into a career just because you earn a healthcare degree. Nurses leave the field all the time and go into positions that utilize their health knowledge: education, legal, insurance, community health, health informatics, healthcare data analytics, etc. A plethora of health degrees are offered 100% online, so I'm still confused.

Many education programs are not intended for licensure. You can go into curriculum design, educational technology, adult education, corporate training, higher education administration, etc. without a K-12 certification. The EdD is one of the most popular online doctoral programs, and many, if not most, of the students are not instructors or K-12 administrators.