Colleges Spending Big to Help Students Pick Majors

In today’s AP article, Colleges Zero in on Students’ Majors, James Hannah discusses the initiatives that many colleges and universities are undertaking to help undecided students pick a major. The rationale behind the new programs is two-fold. A high percentage of students that do not declare majors end up dropping out of school. And the students that remain in school typically require additional years to graduate, clogging the system for incoming students and creating a strain on educational resources. Schools are now taking it upon themselves to help students identify and commit to a major course of study as quickly as possible. As the article points out, the cost of these programs can be significant:

The University of South Carolina this semester more than doubled its staff of advisers focusing on undergraduates who can’t settle on a major. The school opened a center aimed largely at undecideds that will cost $580,000 a year to operate. The cluster of airy, glass-paneled offices includes group study rooms in which undecideds are tutored by fellow students in an effort to give them a connection to certain academic programs.

It will be interesting to watch how this new (or renewed, depending on your perspective) emphasis on choosing a major early and sticking with it will be accepted by this generation of college students. From the perspective of the job search and job seekers, the concept is sound: very few people actually pursue careers in the fields of their major courses of study anyway, so pick one and move on. But trying to encourage people to commit to something when they are clearly uncertain if it is the right choice is a different matter altogether.

Tags: academic programs, college graduates, job search, job seekers

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