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by danking00 5148 days ago
I chose to major in CS partly because of great job prospects. Had that not been the case I might have been a Physics and Philosophy major. My friends probably are an unusual sample of CS and Physics majors. However, they made choices which put them into this position. There might be some systemic privilege on their part, but they also helped themselves.

Your last paragraph resonates with me. I cannot truly believe that there's a huge glut of people with not very practical majors. How could we let this happen? Where were those folks parents, teachers, and friends? Why didn't they point out that success is slim? If they did, why did this glut of individuals stubbornly pursue their desires?

What I'm trying to not say is that this individual sounds a bit silver-spooned. If I couldn't get a job in my chosen field, I'd move on. Pop "Fortunate Son" in the tape player and head to wherever the jobs are. There's apparently an oil boom in North Dakota. There's always need for English teachers around the world. That sounds like an adventure.

I don't want to come across as incompassionate. Society ought to direct people towards success and help them when they're down, but I can't help but feel this guy is hurting himself. We don't have all the data, I hope he's an outlier.

3 comments

How could we let this happen?

When I was at school, all the teachers told us, it doesn't matter what degree you do because you are "learning to learn" and employers don't care anyway, just that you have one.

Even 17-year-old me could see that this was obviously complete nonsense, but not everyone's such a cynic by that age...

I'm a 26 year old liberal arts grad. Only about half of my friends have started a career. Many went for secon degrees.

It really is a common phenomenon.

I'm not surprised there's a glut considering I've still run across people who've asked me what a computer programmer even does.
Most people I come across believe it means that I fix computers.
I do fix computers (broken 8-bit machines from eBay) but that's for fun, not profit ;-)