When Majors Matter

"I'll admit a pet peeve when writers set out two extreme views, attributed vaguely to others, and then position themselves in the squishy middle as the embodiment of the golden mean. It seems too easy and feeds the cultural myth that the center is always correct. So, at the risk of annoying myself, I've been frustrated with the discourse recently around whether students' choice of majors matters."

"In many transfer-focused programs, the opposite is true. A student with the eventual goal of, say, law school can take all sorts of liberal arts classes here, then transfer and take even more. Even if they want to stop at the bachelor's level, the first two years of many bachelor's programs in liberal arts fields are as much about breadth as about depth. Distribution requirements are called what they're called because the courses are distributed across the curriculum."

"Welding is a specific skill. HVAC repair is a skill set aimed squarely at certain kinds of jobs. In each case, the goal is a program-sometimes a degree, sometimes a diploma or certificate-that can lead a student directly into employment that pays a living wage. In some cases, such as nursing, it's fairly normal to go on to higher degrees; in others, such as welding, it's less common. Either way, though, the content of what's taught is necessary to get into the field."

Comprehensive community colleges combine a transfer mission and a vocational mission, producing different meanings for a major across those paths. Vocational programs teach specific skills—nursing, welding, HVAC—that often lead directly to certificates, diplomas, degrees, and living-wage employment; some vocational fields also feed into higher degrees. Transfer-focused programs emphasize breadth through liberal arts and distribution requirements, enabling students to take varied courses before specializing and to transfer toward professional programs like law school or continue toward a bachelor’s. At the community college level, early course choices may not clearly reveal a student’s eventual major, especially among liberal arts students.

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