Solveig Lucia Gold is a senior fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Joshua T. Katz is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Four years ago, the prevailing wisdom was that if you wanted to make six figures immediately after college graduation, you should consider studying computer science. Departments saw record enrollment, and universities started building centimillion-dollar complexes to accommodate the growth. Today, though, the bubble appears to have burst as artificial intelligence squeezes the entry-level jobs that once seemed so sure a thing.
There is no telling what the job market will look like four years from now in any field, from journalism to medicine to research mathematics. When this year’s incoming freshmen look ahead, they have no obvious path to follow. This may be frightening, but it is also liberating. College students, you should seize the opportunity to study whatever you want.
Whatever you want — within reason. There are a lot of silly-sounding classes on offer at universities these days, from Amherst’s “History of Race, Gender, and Comic Books” to Berkeley’s “Black Geographic Thought” to Columbia’s “Queer Theory <3 Sociology.” It would be a shame to waste these precious years in politicized classes that teach you what to think about a relatively narrow range of contemporary issues instead of how to think: how to read broadly and deeply and how to write clearly on questions that have long animated the human spirit.
That said, not all silly-sounding classes are necessarily silly. The key is never to choose your classes by title alone, if quality is what you are after. Peruse the syllabus; ask around about the professor. In every department, at every college or university, there will be legendary teachers and classes.
If you choose your coursework wisely, your schedule will look different from your roommate’s. Although most institutions have general education requirements rather than a core curriculum, freshmen nevertheless often try to knock out their requirements with the same set of large introductory lecture classes as their peers. This is a recipe for an uninspired year.
General education requirements exist to introduce you to a range of academic offerings before you settle on a major. Try seminars as well as lectures. Check out subjects that did not exist in your high school. Remember that never again in your life will you have the luxury to pursue so many of your interests under expert supervision.
And if someone tells you those interests are useless, ignore them. Joshua wrote his PhD dissertation on “Topics in Indo-European Personal Pronouns,” and for years, audiences laughed when he brought it up. What could be more esoteric than personal pronouns? But now that pronouns have taken the spotlight, his expertise comes in handy.
Or take philosophy, which people have deemed useless since the days of Plato’s “Republic.” Yet thanks to AI, philosophy majors are suddenly in demand: The Economist reported in June that “there seems to be no shortage of work for philosophers of AI.”
Which is not to say that you should all go out and study philosophy or Indo-European personal pronouns (though we would be happy if you did). The point is that no one knows what will be useful in the future, so you should choose your classes without worrying too much about utility.
Or, hey, if you want to study something useful, then skip the land mine of college altogether and go to trade school. For now, at least, the world needs more carpenters and electricians.
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