1) Nobody seems to ask the question, why do schools charge the same tuition for every major, even though the schools themselves know that the financial outcomes tend to be dramatically different for those majors?
We might even ask, why do schools offer "useless boutique" majors that aren't financially lucrative? Isn't that educational malpractice?
2) Let me ask you a serious question. I have my own ideas about this, but I want to hear yours without prejudice. Why do you think it is that students choose "a useless boutique major"? And why do you think it is that students choose to go to an expensive private college rather than a state school?
You might claim that these kids are just "dumb", but if you can get admitted to an expensive private college, then you're probably not dumb but rather quite smart. And let's also assume we're talking about "A" students in a "useless boutique major", so kids who apparently quite smart too.
My mom helped to make her program at the school she went to because she was studying thing that were interesting to her. That may not be feasible now and I'm not actually clear on quite how it worked, but I wouldn't say that was educational malpractice.
While I did use the specific skills and knowledge I learned in the process for a couple years, the underlying methodology of discovering needs, aligning interests, convincing others to support you, and developing new ideas and opportunities have been essential - even though I now do something totally unrelated to my degree.
Obviously I was both lucky and atypical, but the "useless vs. useful" distinction is not so black and white. Liberal arts universities _used_ to be about learning how to be a whole person in the world, of which gainful employment is an important part (but not the only goal).
Clearly the aristocratic origins of university education are out of step with the economic realities of today, but the DNA of the approach is arguably even more important to financial outcomes in the long run than just getting a degree in business or STEM.
The world is a mess and defaulting to a cookie cutter degree just because it will get you a vanilla, status-quo job out of the gates is not the kind of thing that will serve most people in the long run (IMHO).
- Ideology/institutional pressures/other nonfinancial factors (many of these universities are going bankrupt)
- They want to trap their students in debt forever
- Hoping for bailout from government or private donors
> Why do you think it is that students choose "a useless boutique major"?
My wording was too harsh. Not all non-lucrative majors are useless (though many are). Here are a few reasons:
- Ideology
- Really drawn to a particular field (ex. "starving artist" who doesn't care if they have to eat ramen every day, if that means they can practice their calling)
- Belief in the old ideal of a well-rounded education. Unfortunately, this ideal is getting less and less achievable, as universities become more expensive (explosion in number of administrators) and more ideological, even as the economy. class system is less and less able to support the social classes that traditionally valued this.
Others may be genuanly interested in philosophy or history or literature or ...
I am thankful for the second kind. Society that has all its culture stored in an LLM is not attractive to me.
Private school vs state school? It would have cost me the same either way. What's the difference then?
BLS has a good start: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/field-of-degree/home.htm