[grannyg00se]

"An important, but tangential point to note is that unlike the US, ...People join colleges already deciding (without taking a single course) what they plan to get a degree in."

Isn't that how it works in the US as well? Don't students join colleges already deciding what they plan to get a degree in? I'm from Canada. When we apply to university we have to apply to a specific degree. First year courses are already tailored to a particular degree path. If that's not the case in the US, when is it that you actually choose your degree? I always hated the notion that 18 year old people coming out of high school are expected to know what course they want to target for the next four years.

[sudont]

No, at least not if the academic advisor knows anything. I was pushed into generals and certain key classes to get an introduction to my major and it's fit. In smaller US high schools there are vocational training paths, however it was limited to welding and nursing where I came from. There's supposed to be the tradition of "Liberal Arts" in the system, where a general academic background is impressed before any specific training.

Because of this, there's more fluidity (not in any traditionally siloed discipline, like medicine) in the US university system, see: the cliché about the 6 year student who changed their major after three years. Most of the structure comes from parental and academic pressure to buckle down and really dedicate to the subject.

[yummyfajitas]

Isn't that how it works in the US as well?

In general no. Some specific programs may have a special admissions program (art and music are culprits here) and sometimes you need to apply to a specific school (e.g. Engineering vs Arts & Sciences). But usually, you can major in "Undeclared" for your first 2 years.

I've always hated the notion that we expect 18 year old people to invest $25-100k on education in "Undeclared Major" with the eventual hope that they will figure something useful out. It's almost as silly as dropping $25-100k on "Undeclared Stock or ETF", though unlike "Undeclared Stock or ETF", there is some hedonic benefit.

[nostrademons]

Isn't that what an index fund is? "Undeclared" stock - you'll get whatever the average of the market is buying.

Just because they're an undeclared major doesn't mean they're not learning anything. You still take courses for those first two years - you just don't know what they're leading up to. It's not all that unlike founding a startup knowing that you'll have to pivot to get to a viable product.

(I was a de facto physics major for my first 3 semesters, switched back to being actually undeclared for my 4th (flirting with philosophy and sociology majors in the process), actually declared as a physics major in my 5th, and then switched to a CS major in my 8th and last. Just because you think you know what you're doing doesn't mean you actually do.)

[hvs]

You can change degrees fairly easily but, depending on the requirements for your new degree, you may have to fulfill a number of additional requirements. For example, if you are going to a large public university and are in their engineering program studying for an electrical engineering degree, you can switch over to computer science with very little difficulty. However, if you are in the liberal arts college studying philosophy and want to switch to computer science in the engineering college, you will often have certain minimum requirements to be accepted into the college (much like if you had applied from outside).

Overall, though, US universities and colleges are very flexible compared to other countries. Probably why they are so popular with foreign students. :)

[pjscott]

Another data point here: my first year of studying electrical engineering was almost exactly the same as the freshman year of someone studying any engineering field, and it's common for people to switch majors after one or two semesters. If it's a switch from one branch of engineering to another, it's pretty much effortless.

I hear that things are similar in other majors: if you're switching from one major to another that's fairly close to it (e.g. from molecular biology to botany) it'll be pretty easy. Longer jumps are more difficult, especially if you're going into a major with long prerequisite chains, like mathematics.

[hvs]

That's kind of the point I was trying to make in the initial post. The first one to two years in engineering schools tend to be very similar across majors. Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics are all required. After about your sophomore year, you will be adding quite a bit of time to your college career if you decide to switch.

[jarek]

If switching from EE to CS is very easy, one or both are being taught wrong.

[nhamann]

It is my understanding that at top schools like MIT at Berkeley, EE and CS are actually combined into a single undergraduate degree.

e.g. "The Berkeley EECS major, offered through the College of Engineering (COE), combines fundamentals of computer science and electrical engineering in one major."

[jarek]

The fact that they are combined to form a third program underlines the point.

[francoisdevlin]

Remind me where CS came from again?

[adamzochowski]

This is the old debate of whether CS should stand for Computer Science ( chips / signals / digital electronics ) or Computing Science ( algorithms / language design ).

[jarek]

Mathematics?

[georgecmu]

Philosophy.

[gamble]

Even in Canada, liberal arts students don't have to declare a major until they're a couple of years in. However, for STEM degrees you've generally got to know where you want to go by the end of high school, or by the end of freshman year at the latest.

Of course, in the US and Canada you can generally switch programs in midstream. That may not be possible in India.

[fryguy]

It's not necessarily true. There are a lot of people that take mainly "general education" classes that are required to graduate during the first two years, or alternatively get an associates degree first. Also, given that you're not in a particularly demanding major (like the max-unit engineering degrees) and have a lot of electives, you're not out a lot of work by changing majors within your first two years. Most majors don't have chaining dependencies that take the full four years to complete. For my degree, there was a set of 8 classes that were required to become an upper-division student that only had a 3 semester-deep dependency chain (let's use a computer -> object oriented programming -> abstract data types), and then upper division had around 8-10 classes, and there was only a 3 semester-deep chain (data structures -> processor design -> operating systems). The number of classes you can take per semester is the limiting factor.

Also, considering that people are working jobs and going to school at the same time, four year degrees sometimes take longer. It's pretty common for the challenging engineering degrees to take 5 years due to the sheer number of units required to graduate (I took 6 years, without switching, although I did get a double major in math & computer science).