By snoadmin
College students everywhere are faced with the difficult task of finding their first “real” job. After years of slaving away over books and computer screens, students look forward to finally entering their chosen field. But, it isn’t always easy to find a post-grad job, and it’s become increasingly harder over the past few years as the economy has suffered and the unemployment rate rose nationally.
CSULB students who stay in California have it even rougher, as the unemployment rate in California is higher than the national average. Some students who major in certain subjects (say, history or psychology) may have an even more difficult time finding work than others, which has left some wondering if it’s a good idea to cut the subjects altogether.
Unemployment is rough no matter what your field of study is, but cutting majors while education suffers in this country isn’t the way to remedy it.
The idea of cutting majors with low post-grad employment rates actually comes from the Chinese government. After a few years of monitoring which majors produce the lowest amount of students who get jobs, the underperforming majors were cut. The move was also done in an effort to keep Chinese students from leaving to attend overseas universities.
But, what would happen if CSULB did the same? How would students react if, after tracking which majors at the university produce the lowest amount of employed post-grad students, certain areas of study were dropped altogether?
At first, it seems like a good idea. By cutting majors that don’t give students a high likelihood of getting a job, it seems like universities would be doing students a service. But cutting majors would never fly here, and honestly, it shouldn’t.
Cutting majors at CSULB, especially impacted majors like psychology, would lead to increased amounts of stress for everyone and more competition among the students in majors that weren’t cut. Cutting majors would lead to overfilling the others, as well. Even more, CSULB’s enrollment would likely take a hit, as the university would miss out on students who’d like to study the old majors even in spite of their low performance.
Another reason this wouldn’t work is that we just don’t respond well to change, especially when it comes to our education. Who can blame us? We’ve had to brace ourselves for semesters of tuition hikes and cut classes; all the stuff we’ve been complaining and protesting about for weeks (years, really) now.
Whenever something happens to change the way we receive our education, we never benefit. This would just be the latest in a string of events that follow that lead. At this point, we shouldn’t worry about not getting a job immediately after college. As scary as that last sentence sounds, our focus should be getting through the majors we have chosen as soon as possible in order to avoid accumulating mounds of debt. We can worry about the rest later.
Realistically, it’s unlikely that CSULB would cut majors in the near future, at least we hope. Considering how badly things went at the last Board of Trustees meeting, it probably isn’t the best time to even consider changing the system.
Still, if our state funding continues to decrease, who knows what options the university will have. Hopefully, they won’t involve offering students less subjects to study-at a higher price, of course.
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