The 4 Overlooked Elements of Choosing a College Major
According to a 2013 Washington Post article, just one quarter (27.3%) of college graduates have jobs in a field that matches their major (Plumer 2013). This leads to an important question - why, then, do majors matter? If I can't work in my field of study, then is choosing a major just a fruitless charade? When I chose Sport Management as my undergraduate degree, I certainly expected to be working with a sports team when I graduated. Unfortunately, life is rarely as linear as we want it to be.
The happy ending is that I reaped many of the benefits of the elements outlined below even though I didn't plan for them. College majors are important even if they bear little relationship to your future job title. Unless you decide to major in an extremely technical field (doctors and lawyers, you know who you are), the ancillary benefits of a degree are just as important as what is written on your diploma. Hopefully, these five considerations will help you avoid having to rely on luck (like I did) to make the most of your major:
1. Professors. From personal experience, I would postulate that the number one factor for success in college is the student-professor relationship. This dynamic could be applied across multiple scenarios, but it still holds true; information is only as good as the channel through which it flows. It seems research would back me up on this - a Faculty Focus article from 2013 noted positive correlations between quality student-professor relationships and college completion, persistence, and effort, among other things (Weimer 2013). Multiple times throughout my academic career I have taken similar classes but benefited significantly more in one class than another because the professor's style was conducive to my own.
Now, I should mention here that learning should always be recognized as a two-way street. As a student, I firmly believe that one of the best things I did was to actively communicate with my professors. Nothing creepy - just actively participating in class and asking questions. Despite what some may think, professors can and will adjust their teaching style to their students. It is just awfully hard to accomplish if you don't speak up.
If you are currently undecided, ask your academic advisor if you can meet with a program's professors or audit classes. You will learn as quickly as I did that the right professor can make watching paint dry intellectually stimulating. On the other hand, a professor who you don't mesh well with can make your field of study a Major pain.
2. Surrounding Resources. If you are a current college student, I understand that your surrounding resources may be difficult to change. Nevertheless, your college's location significantly affects your ability to immerse yourself in your chosen field. In the purest sense, it can be boiled down to this - there is a reason that the Fashion Institute of Technology is located in New York City, the mecca of American fashion. If possible, choose a major that coincides with the opportunities surrounding your campus. As a Sport Management major at Cazenovia College, we had multiple minor league baseball and hockey teams nearby that we could partner with and learn from. If you have no interest in interning for or partnering with the companies located near your college, there is a strong possibility that you may not realize the full benefits of your chosen major. If you are unsure which partnerships your school (or prospective school) has, ask your academic advisor or your school's internship coordinator.
3. Transferable Skills. As a former Human Resources intern who was involved in reading resumes and developing job descriptions, I can say absolutely that your college major means little, if anything at all, when it reaches the eyes of an employer (Again, doctors and lawyers aside). On the few occasions when we did require a particular major, it was either in a highly technical field or we found later that it didn't actually have that much to do with the job and could be removed.
In fact, an Association of American Colleges and Universities study reported on by the Wall Street Journal cited responses from 318 different companies which heavily de-emphasized college major in employment decision-making (Korn 2013). To these companies, college major doesn't matter as much anymore because positions entail a wider range of responsibilities. As a side note and from an employee's perspective, college majors are also less important because of how often we switch careers in today's world. In choosing a major, it is instead important to consider how that program is going to arm you with transferable skills which can be applied to many different fields. The more you learn these transferable skills and the more able you are to articulate them, the more equipped you will be for our rapidly-changing economy.
4. Classmates. Group projects; oh, the humanity. They can be a pleasant and highly-engaging experience, or they can be the bane of your entire existence. The one thing they always be, however, is a part of professional life. Having positive working relationships with the classmates in your program will help you when it comes time to do the same at the office. If you are currently undecided and have spent some time at your college, you can get a sense of the personalities and the general work ethic in the programs you are considering. Whether you like it or not, the other students in your field will have a direct and indirect relationship to your academic success. Whether through group projects, classroom atmosphere, or influencing teacher behavior, the other students in your program will have a significant effect on your own learning.
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I hope that if you are searching for your college major, these considerations will help you find the right one. If you are a recent student, I am interested to know if anything else influenced your choice of major. Thank you for reading and I appreciate any insights you may have.
References
Korn, M. (2013, 10 April). Your college major is a minor issue, employers say. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/04/10/your-college-major-is-a-minor-issue-employers-say/
Plumer, B. (2013, 20 May). Only 27 percent of college grads have a job related to their major. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/20/only-27-percent-of-college-grads-have-a-job-related-to-their-major/
Weimer, M. (2013, 12 September). Are student-professor relationships more important in hard courses? Faculty Focus. Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/are-student-professor-relationships-more-important-in-hard-courses/