College students should be encouraged to pursue subjects that interest them rather than the courses that seem most likely to lead to jobs

The choice of one’s college major is not a trivial one. In fact, it is not uncommon for entering students to ruminate on this decision for months, perhaps years, and then once a decision has been made, immediately begin to second-guess it. The prompt recommends that students not belabor this point too long and simply choose a path that conforms most closely to their interests and skills. In my opinion, I strongly agree with this suggestion and argue that students look inward rather than outward when choosing college courses for two reasons.

To begin, the job market is ever-shifting, and one decade’s ‘hot’ job is another decade’s dying one. Thus, to choose one’s profession based solely on the availability of work is to take a short-time perspective, one that will likely to backfire. For instance, in the 1650s through the 1980s, nuclear engineering was a rapidly growing field as many of the most powerful nations on the Earth were not only designing and manufacturing nuclear weapons but hundreds of nuclear power plants as well. Consequently, nuclear engineering graduates were able to find high- paying work almost immediately upon graduation. However, because of issues related to recent nuclear accidents like the well-publicized Fukushima disaster, many countries are moving away from nuclear power in favor of green technologies. Students who chose nuclear engineering in the 1970s because of the abundant job prospects were certainly facing a different job market in the 1990s – and this market has only worsened through the 2000s. The above example illustrates that the job market is highly contingent upon unpredictable factors and that, if one assumes it is static, he or she is likely to get burned at some point in the future. It seems absurd to think of now during the current technological boom, but will the software engineering industry still possess dizzying job prospects in the future? History tells us that it will not.

Further, even if we assume that the job market is not dynamic, that it is as unchangeable as gravity, one should still pursue his or her interests because our happiness level plays a crucial role in how effectively we work. For instance, if a student who is passionate about horse training ‘pragmatically’ chooses the path of computer programming because of the plethora of lucrative job opportunities, she runs the risk of finding herself in a field she abhors and a job she finds no satisfaction in. She might go to work each day, sit at her desk, and stare at her computer screen with the horse wallpaper, wondering what could have been and the career path she could have chosen. She might complete her programming tasks haphazardly and submit subpar work. Research has consistently demonstrated that, perhaps above all other factors, happiness has the most direct causal effect on work efficiency. In other words, workers who find personal satisfaction in their craft not only work faster but also produce higher quality products and services as well. Thus, on a macro scale, the government should encourage their populations to pursue their passions because long-term, doing so leads to a more smoothly functioning economy not bogged down by worker discontentment. One needs to only look at government regimes from the past that forced many of their citizens to work on farms for the ‘collective good’. The vast majority of these workers had no interest in being on the farm, and agricultural output plummeted as a result. This phenomenon can infect an entire economy if people choose fields of study based solely on the promise of work and income.

Of course, some argue that in our increasingly globalized economic competition for jobs has skyrocketed and thus it is imperative that we pursue practical paths. However, isn’ t that precisely why should we follow our interests? If we do so, we are likely to do the best job possible. We are likely to compete at the highest level. We are likely to carve out a niche for ourselves in this ‘increasingly globalized world.’ People who ignore their inner voices do so at their own peril.