Editorial: Don’t rush to pick out your degree

By Ray Segebrecht

Monday, September 29, 2008

Passion is the most important thing to consider when choosing a degree. Degrees are students’ passes into the professional world, but they are not all-access. Whatever students choose to study in college will in some way limit what they can do when they’re done.

KU officials have stressed that students should pick a major early and stick with their choice. This will save money and time for students who know what career they want, and events like the Career Fair will help put more students in that category.

However, if professional happiness is finding a job people truly care about, they must keep an open mind in college until they discover a degree that fulfills its requisites. An unacceptable major for the job we want might as well be called S.O.L., not just B.A. or B.S.

For most students, college is a transition between the required standardized education of high school and finding their place in the convoluted maze that is the real world, and students often need more than a few semesters filled with 100-level requisites to discern their futures. Even if that time extends past the four-year graduation goal of the University’s Four-Year Tuition Contract, the cost of an extra semester or two pales in comparison to the 40 years of happiness choosing the right career path can give them.

Many people mistakenly assume undecided students do not have passion, but some just have too much passion for too many things. Narrowing passion to one field and interest is the hard part.

Long before this generation started producing more college students than ever before, a college degree used to be more universally applicable, so applicable that any major could land a person a variety of jobs. The majors students pick will likely determine 40 hours of every week of their lives, at least until they find new career paths. Students need to be careful and choose the degrees that lead to the professions that would mean the most to them, however long it takes.

Some students may still think rushing out in four years as more important than correctly discerning the right degree for their career of passion.

— Ray Segebrecht for the editorial board

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