Students are increasingly choosing majors the way investors choose stocks: by chasing the highest expected return. But when artificial intelligence is reshaping the labor market, that strategy may be riskier than it appears.
Every year, I watch some of my brightest students leave economics for actuarial science.
I understand why. Actuarial science is respected, stable and well paid. Yet I often wonder what is being lost.
The problem is not actuarial science. The problem is the assumption that higher education should primarily be a financial optimization exercise.
That assumption is becoming increasingly common just as artificial intelligence is making the future of work harder to predict than it has been in decades.
In effect, we are asking 18-year-olds to optimize for a labor market that may not exist by the time they reach middle age.
Students are increasingly told to choose a major the way investors choose stocks: by chasing the highest expected return. Yet this advice assumes that we know which occupations will thrive 20 or 30 years from now. We do not.
It also assumes that students already know enough about themselves to make such decisions wisely. That assumption may be even more questionable.
By the time students arrive at college, most have spent 12 or more years in highly structured environments. Their schedules have been organized for them. Their courses largely chosen for them. Their extracurricular activities often selected with admissions in mind.
Students become very good at meeting expectations. What they often do not become good at is discovering themselves.
Imagine walking into a Chinese buffet and deciding beforehand that you will eat only orange chicken because everyone says it is the most popular dish.
You ignore everything else, fill your plate, and leave.
You have missed the opportunity to discover foods you might enjoy more. But you have also made a bet that orange chicken will remain the most desirable item forever.
That is essentially what many students are doing when they choose a major primarily on the basis of today’s salary rankings.
The problem is that the menu is changing.
Artificial intelligence is already reshaping occupations across the economy. Some tasks are being automated. Others are being transformed. Entire career paths are evolving in ways that nobody fully understands.
No one knows with confidence which occupations will command the greatest rewards 20 years from now. Yet many students are behaving as though such forecasts were reliable.
Interestingly, many discussions of the future workforce emphasize adaptability, creativity, curiosity, communication and lifelong learning. These are not the products of premature specialization. They are the products of exploration.
That is why the current obsession with educational return on investment may be misguided. Students are being encouraged to optimize for a future we cannot confidently predict.
A better strategy is to discover where their talents and interests genuinely lie.
People work harder at things they find meaningful. They persist through setbacks. They improve because they want to improve. Over time, that effort compounds into expertise, and expertise is often what markets reward.
The most successful people I know rarely chose a field because it topped a ranking of expected earnings. They chose something that captured their imagination and then became exceptionally good at it.
Of course, financial realities matter. Students should think seriously about debt, employment prospects and economic security. But there is a difference between considering financial realities and allowing them to dominate every educational decision.
The deeper purpose of higher education is not simply to match students to jobs. It is to help them discover where they can create the most value — in the economy and in their own lives.
The greatest risk facing today’s students is not that they will choose the wrong major.
It is that they will mistake today’s labor market for tomorrow’s.
In an age of artificial intelligence, exploration is no longer the alternative to practicality.
It is practicality.
Joydeep Bhattacharya is a professor of economics at Iowa State University. Contact: joydeep@iastate.edu.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: With AI, picking a major because of high salaries is riskier | Opinion
Reporting by Joydeep Bhattacharya, Guest columnist / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Joydeep Bhattacharya, Guest columnist | USA TODAY Network
