Sunday, January 22, 2012
First thoughts for my paper
When first registering for this class, I was a little nervous, as it is a writing course. I seem to have the habit of not knowing what I want to write about until I absolutely have to (admittedly, this is very last minute)...As an indecisive person, it really messes me up when it comes to school. I'm thinking that I might look into writing about how college majors affect a person's job upon graduation. I am an "undecided" major, so I'm already kind of reading about majors and how they look for certain jobs and what is in demand right now. It's also interesting when I hear about someone who majored in something but ended up with a completely different job. For example, my father went to school to be a police officer and ended up being a director at an insurance company. I feel like this is probably a common thing. Researching this topic could help me decide what I should major in to prepare for a job I'd like.
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This is a good start. But I think you need to add a layer to it to make it into more of a project. Right now you are only imagining it as an exercise in finding information. You also need to make sense of that information in a larger context -- and not just what it means to you personally.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you might start with looking into pay by college major and related information. It has long been claimed that college adds $1 million to your lifetime earnings over what you would make with just a high school diploma. But the truth is, that's an average. It might add $2 million to the earnings of engineers, but only $500K to the earnings of English majors. The Wall Street Journal has put together some information and tools that can help you look into this, and there is plenty of other information out there:
1) What Hedge Funds Can Teach College Students
2) Video accompanying article
3) Weighing the Value of that College Diploma
4) From College Major to Career
5) Human Capital Score
That last one might be most immediately relevant. And you should look back at the whole "Generation Jobless" series in WSJ.
As for making sense of it: you have to ask a larger question. For example, here are some questions I think of: Have things changed from when your father was in school and starting his career, so that majors and the technical knowledge associated with their disciplines have become a necessary background for some career fields? Has knowledge within certain fields gotten more technical so that it now requires prior learning to master and you can no longer learn on the job? Has globalization affected this, since now there are majors from overseas also competing for jobs? Is it possible to be happy -- and maybe even happier -- choosing a major and a field that you love rather than the major and field that will earn you the most money? Is it all about the money, or are there other "values" that college imparts?
You should find a question that interests you and ask lots of questions. The goal, though, is to ask a question that redirects the project from mere personal exploration to investigation of ideas that might matter to others.
As for students who have explored this topic before, see The Cost of College, which was not the strongest blog but definitely has some ideas. For an interesting reframing of these issues in terms of "happiness research" (yes, there is such a field), see College Happiness.