I started last year as a finance major, but later found myself uninterested in doing spreadsheets for the rest of my life.
This is a common occurrence — a study by Penn State found that 75 percent of college students change their major at least once.
Recently however, politicians are putting an emphasis on the usefulness of certain degrees. The emphasis of “useful” degrees and the proposed cutting of funding for universities would prevent students from obtaining a college education and also fails to solve the root of our the problem in American education.
In January, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin proposed his recent budget plan. In order to fix Kentucky’s infrastructure and tackle the state’s rising heroin problem. Gov. Bevin has proposed cuts across the board with a 4.5 percent reduction in college funding for this year and more cuts proposed for the next few years.
Kentucky is facing a worker shortage, and Bevin blames colleges for producing graduates without necessary skills to succeed in the job market.
He wishes to rework the system to incentivize schools to produce more engineers than liberal arts majors.
Gov. Bevin’s proposal has valid points. STEM degrees are supposedly more in demand.
However, there is a problem with incentivizing some degrees over others. First, let’s look at the standards of the programs. University of Kentucky was ranked 94th for engineering in the country.
Manufacturing companies still heavily recruit there, and the school offers a co-op program to give graduate students access to internships.
The graduates who come through UK, Purdue or University of Michigan’s engineering programs have all maintained a certain standard that allows these schools to attract these companies.
Under Gov. Bevin’s proposed plan, however, the program is more likely to accept people into the engineering program in order to receive more funding.
This hurts the standards of the program and could produce less-able engineers. With the future of infrastructure, pharmaceuticals and computers resting in their hands, this is not something that the people of Kentucky want.
Moreover, it is presumptive to assume the way to get more engineers or doctors or computer scientists is to incentivize it in college. By high school, most students know what they like to study and rarely prefer science.
Additionally, a majority of students who initially major in science change their minds. Elementary and middle schools need to put an emphasis on science and the amazing things that can be done with a STEM degree.
By high school, teachers need to effectively teach students what is expected of them as science majors in order to prepare them for their college classes.
Gov. Bevin’s plan does nothing to address the core problem with STEM degrees and will not produce the engineers that his state desperately needs.
Instead, it will produce sub-par engineers and prevent students from following paths better suited for them.
Gov. Bevin should know this. As an Eastern Asian Studies major, he managed to become Kentucky’s governor.
npatwari@indiana.edu
