Despite the prospects of mounting student debt, it seems that college students are not influenced by the range of pay and job security of the field they have chosen, even if these are less than they imagined.
Rutgers University surveyed 4,900 undergraduates across their three campuses, asking students to choose from six broad fields (business, education, health, humanities, social science, and STEM). Based on their selection, the students were shown median salary information, range of pay and job security information, or no data at all. Once they viewed the salary information, researchers asked them to estimate their future salary and the likelihood that they would select a major related to that field.
The researchers found many students hold “higher-than-realistic views of their potential future earnings,” especially in the “high paying fields of business, health and STEM.” Even after having their “pie-in-the-sky” expectations deflated, survey participants expressed almost no interest in changing their majors.
While this data is specific to Rutgers, the report notes that a survey of male undergraduates at Duke University resulted in similar findings, where the students’ estimates were overly optimistic. Even in that study, only about 7.5 percent said a better knowledge of pay would lead them to change their majors.
The Trump administration has inspired a newfound optimism in college students, who are eager to pay off their loans as soon as possible. The economy is booming and unemployment is up, making this one of the best job markets for millennials. Yet while their prospects are much better than they were during the eight years of the Obama administration, millennials may be trusting a little too much in the promise of a college degree and not fully factoring in the competitive talent pool.
High schools often push college admissions as the end-all goal for students without actually educating students on the earnings they can expect in their career paths. By the time they are studying a major in college, they’ve already invested time and money into a course of study and are unlikely to change it.
“Earnings information may help students more carefully consider potential earnings when making decisions about majors or at least when developing expectations for their job search,” the researchers concluded. “More information on the types of skills and experiences that would help students move to the higher end of the earnings distribution across a range of majors may better inform students in their preparation for a career.”
Brendan Pringle (@BrendanPringle) is a freelance journalist in California. He is a National Journalism Center graduate and formerly served as a development officer for Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch.
