When you ask someone what their major is, they almost always follow their answer with the career field they plan to go into. Students usually take into account how their studies will directly apply to this career field when choosing what to major in, but this perspective is narrow and short-sighted.
Although a major can steer students in a specific direction, whether it be STEM, liberal arts or communications, a major carries much less weight in the job market than students typically believe.
Amy Fair graduated from UT in 2005 with a journalism degree and the intention to work in the field but eventually chose to pursue a career in marketing.
“I realized that the lifestyle of a journalist wasn’t necessarily what I was looking for in my future,” Fair said. “I wanted to really take my writing skills and use them in different ways.”
In the job application process, a major is rarely an integral part of the procedure. Now more than ever, employers are looking for a more developed and experiential skill set in their candidates. From a career perspective, there is much more value in community and personal involvement than just excelling in a particular field of study.
“More and more we’re actually hearing from employers that want to see a really diversified skill set,” said Nathan Langfitt, director of career education for Texas Career Engagement. “It really is about having a really good grasp on the skills you want to develop and then also, knowing that there’s a lot of places to develop those skills outside of your traditional coursework.”
If an undergraduate is unsure of the steps they want to take after graduation, Career Services advises students to consider their values, interests, personality and skills, or “VIPS.” Major is a minor part of the conversation. The right career path relies more on who a student is, what they can do, what they enjoy and how they operate.
“Every major has incredible value in how you are going to use it to conceptualize the work that you do one day,” Langfitt said. “In any one given profession, there’s an incredible value, especially in our modern workforce, of having an interdisciplinary lens and that interdisciplinary mindset.”
There are fields students go into that have a required skill set that is very specific, and choosing a path that aligns with it benefits them. Nursing is a great example of a major that gives students more specific career skills. However, because finding and making a career is about skill sets, many careers have much broader requirements.
Instead of picking a marketable major, developing skills independent from required coursework is more beneficial. Following your personal interests, finding how you work best and figuring out what drives you are more important than picking the right major.
“You can develop a lot of great skills by getting involved on campus, by being a part of a student org, by getting a part-time job either on campus or off,” Langfitt said. “You can also get a lot of skills by taking on an experiential component.”
Knowing the role of a major in the career process allows students more freedom to choose a major based on enjoyment, without having to focus as much on how it will affect their future lifestyle goals. Choosing your major should be about developing yourself rather than progressing in coursework.
You get to decide what you’ll do, not your major.
Meltzer is a writing and rhetoric freshman from San Antonio, Texas.
