I’m in my last year of college and for some reason, I decided to design my own major, and I feel like I made a mistake, I’m looking at jobs RN and feel like no employer is going to understand it at all. And that I don’t really have much in demand skills? (FYI - it’s a BA in community development, so kinda like urban planning but more expansive, my major Combines Social Work, Business, and Sustainability)
In y’all experience, does a college major matter much in the long run?
It entirely depends on the degree and career path you are after.
Definitely does in engineering. There’s a lot of stuff you learn on the job, but the stuff from school gives you an idea where to go for more information so you won’t be blind sided as easily.
I won’t say it doesn’t matter, but I will say that having the degree is a thousand times better than not having one at all, whatever major you chose
Yes. For many companies, a 4-yr degree is a non-negotiable requirement. Any 4 year degree just to be considered. If you manage to get a good job without a degree, you will still be categorized by HR as a degree holder or not. This doesn’t always factor into raises, promotions, layoffs, but it can.
Depends entirely on what you want to do. For some professional careers, the degree is everything (engineer, lawyer, etc.) For other career paths it may not matter at all.
Could you find something doing “community development” with the degree you have? Almost certainly, since that’s an extremely broad description, as you noted.
Without more information on what you actually want to be/do, it’s tough to give any useful advice.
I graduated with a degree in French.
I’m a software developer. I’ve literally never used it on the job.
C’est la vie, c’est non ?
It really depends on the field, lots of jobs just like to see that you went to college and got some kind of higher education. Its OK if you don’t necessarily use 100% of what you learned it just more demonstrates that you have the capacity and drive to constantly better yourself. Did you have a particular kind of career in mind when picking these majors?
I mean there are obviously exceptions, like if you want to be a doctor you’d better have gone to med school.
I decided to make my own to mostly avoid classes in each of the majors I wasn’t interested in tbh. I wanted to go into some type of urban/housing career, but after interning in a planning department for my city, I realize how limiting this career really is. I have been interested in community development since high-school.
Playing devil’s advocate, I’d be worried you’d avoid doing work you don’t want to do, but is core work that needs to be done. Not all employers want or are set up to employ wildcards. You may have to make your own path here, too.
That’s fair, I have done jobs and internships and I have learnt there’s just things I don’t like about but I tough it out. I wouldn’t frame it like that in a job interview tho! I would say it was about to best use my time in college studying and developing a topic area I was passionate in! I go to a small liberal arts college with alot of different topic areas but not a lot of depth, and didn’t want to transfer due to financial reasons so this was good compromise.
Good organizations will recognize the problem solving you did for your own learning outside of just following a curriculum. You may need to spell that out on the resume and interview
If you’re looking to get into urban planning I can tell you that your undergrad is not that important. I did my undergrad in geography which is a typical route and it was helpful in some aspects but I wouldn’t say it was necessary. In my masters cohort we had people with degrees in psychology, business, art history, philosophy, ect. and a couple architects from India.
A lot of degrees are useful to urban planning, even if they aren’t the typical route. It’s really about how you apply that degree and understanding to the field. Philosophy and sociology are good for the policy part, business is good for the finance and economic part, ect.
Working for a city can be challenging especially if you have aspirations and want to see real change, something that was drilled into my cohort in school but took a couple years in the field for some people to figure out. Maybe non profit or a private company aligned to your values might be a better route than public of you’re looking to get into something adjacent to public planning. That being said, just being an active member in your community and speaking up for projects you believe in at council meetings is more impactful than writing the policy.
For some jobs, it is important. However, there are some boring white collar jobs that generally want college graduates for their soft skills.
It sounds like you basically got a BA in business with some specialization, so I would go for jobs like that.
Some fields require a degree. Some degrees add significant value (you’ll gain more relevant knowledge in 4 years than you would working 4 years).
So, I got a ba in political science and like two minors. I ended up doing computer repair for a good decade then got into a job doing purchasing then eventually got into IT sourcing/procurement. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I didn’t have some good fundamentals in reading and writing, which the BA provided.
But in the long run, it doesn’t matter once you get work experience. The degree is a check box at some point.I’ll chime in that a degree in accounting or finance can get you far… Most here will mention engineering/medical/programming. They also will likely bemoan the finance and accounting folks they work with as useless.
I’ll agree that due to many burrecratic choices c-suite leadership make there are a ton of inefficiencies but there is always a ton of work to be done and the skills can transfer to quite a bit of companies… Even very large corporations just end up having horribly inefficient processes and constant churn in leadership switches it up a lot… So if your someone who knows accounting and finance well and can think learn to bridge the never ending gap in tools and people requesting data you can do well.
The first thing anyone should do if they’re in business for themselves, as soon as the money becomes available, is hire an accountant and a lawyer.
Those are the only two industries who know how society really works
I don’t know, but it kind of feels like they wouldn’t have taken me as a network engineer for a national ISP if I had studied business administration instead of computer science.
Maybe I’m missing the point of the question. Right now the answer just seems to be “obviously yes”
I actually think community based sustainability is going to be a huge in demand area as climate change worsens. Depending on how much you want to sell your soul to the capitalist machine, there will be plenty of work opportunities in helping companies implement sustainability initiatives.
Also, social work and community development are widely applicable across the human services industry. You could get a job in government or not for profit organisations. In order to qualify as a social worker you’d probably have to do a masters, but there’s plenty of community based roles that you can get into with a bachelors.
Yeah, it sounds like a great starting point if you want to work for a local government.
I was actually a Sustainability major but switched to Social Services then made my own, because I wanted to focus on stuff I was interested in. But yeah, thinking about it I feel it just depends on how I market it. And I was considering grad school and might get a MSW or MPA.
I have a MSW and wish I did an MPA instead lol.
I hear that alot! I feel like for people who are interested in more macro works a MSW has kinda been pigeon holed in micro work sadly. Like I care about social economic policy mostly. I think a MSW is valuable but a MPA might be more so for what I want to do.
Not unless you go to a specific field that has hard legal requirements. Doctor, Teacher, Psychiatrist, Urban Planners, etc. Software engineers, producers, artists, project managers, account managers, I’ve seen go very far without a degree at all. Some even have a degree with a major from an entirely different field.
So it highly depends on the field. For your field, I’d say, yes your degree and major matters.
This absolutely doesn’t come from informed experience, and is speculative drivel, but:
I think just mentioning that you “designed your own major” may help a lot in various types of job search. Regardless of what the actual process is like (I have no idea), it sounds impressive, and makes it sound like you’re a person with a lot of initiative and drive. That could help make up for any perceived competitive disadvantage.
Of course your mileage may vary, especially if you’re applying for a job that would heavily revolve around topics covered by a very specific major. But sometimes it helps to stand out, and “I designed my own major” could help you do that.
Outside of the hard sciences where youre there to learn necessary specific foundational knowledge and technical stuff - mech/elec/civil engineering, high level medical, etc - it really doesn’t. The degree is proof that you can put your head down and manage yourself well enough to survive in the white collar world.
And the debt that degree costs will keep you beholden and subservient to the corporate overlords.
They’ve outsourced their own training and shouldered the costs onto teenagers.
There’s a reason it’s called “fuck you” money.
Yeah student debt is no joke. I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I could commute and had enough student aid and scholarship to go debt free first 2 years and use savings from working part time to pay next 2 years off in (less than 6k each year). But I wish more companies would invest in proper training than push that on students and college to do (poorly imo).
Depends what you want to do. You can always do consultancy work, those consultancy firms usually just want to see that you have a bachelors degree. Since that means you are trainable. They usually train their new recruits internally. You probably not gonna end up at the big firms like EY or BCG, because they only hire people from Ivy leagues or through their own social network. But there are plenty of smaller firms who will hire you.
And you can always just get a bunch of a Salesforce certificates to improve your resume.
Thanks for the salesforce tip! I saw a listing on LinkedIn for a Community Development Associate for ICF or something and applied anyway despite having a couple more months till I graduate. I have been looking at consultancy firms and engineering services firms as well. I was kinda stuck on working in local government but I have learnt there’s actually alot of options to try for.
Local and state government jobs are great
Also look at nonprofits. Many would be interested in this major
