Blog #12: Article Review

Grant, Tracy. "College majors and their income potential".  Washington Post. 25 Jan 2012. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/college-majors-and-their-income-potential/2012/01/16/gIQANK94QQ_story.html>

This article describes peoples' increasing worries about unemployment rates regarding recent grads. The author, Tracy Grant, writes from a parent's perspective. Her sons are currently in high school and are thinking about their future college careers. With more and more statistics available online, many majors do not look very promising money-wise. Also on the page of this article is a poll which asks readers, "How much did you consider future employment when choosing a college major?"
The results read:
A lot - 50%
Some - 24%
A little - 13%Not at all - 13%Grant is a columnist for The Washington Post who writes on parenting issues.

"Computer and math majors face an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent, not much better than the national average. Education majors face less trouble finding jobs, with a 5.4 percent unemployment rate. But once they get jobs, as Singletary points out, 'their earnings are also low and only improve marginally with experience and education.'"


"...should I counsel one son, who has an intrinsic ability to figure out how things work, that he should go into “agricultural and natural resources” because it has a much lower unemployment rate? And should I tell a teenager who already writes better than his mom that engineering is the way to go because it guarantees a higher annual gross income?"

"I am now 25 years into my career, working at one of the leading media companies in the country and making more money that I ever would have imagined I would. To what do I attribute that success? I love what I do."

"In these economic times, it’s hard not to obsess about whether our kids are employable. The Georgetown report, and Singletary’s column, raise important economic issues that should be part of any family’s college decision-making process."