Despite new data showing that what students major in is far more important in landing a well-paying job than where they graduated from, students continue to put themselves through unnecessary hell (“The College-Admissions Crucible,” The New Yorker, May 29). I seriously doubt that will change.
The problem is that young people and their parents are obsessed with brands. The truth is that there is little evidence to support the assumption that a degree from, say, Harvard is intrinsically more valuable than one from, say, the University of Mississippi. Instead, it’s the marketing of the brand that has caused the assumption.
When few people graduated from college in this country, it mattered little what graduates studied during their four years. But today things are different. A computer science major is far more likely to land a high-salary position than a gender-studies major.
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