Why aerospace engineering? Is it because people want more mechanical engineering instead and not something so niche?
It’s the equivalent of “become a Hollywood superstar” for engineering specialties. Lots of grads chasing relatively few positions in the industry – many will ultimately take positions working in related engineering fields like mechanical or automotive engineering, but at the end of the day the aerospace sector just doesn’t develop enough new products to employ all the grads coming out of school with a degree.
Damn, at all the engineering conferences I’ve been too there are military contractors all over the place promoting aerospace engineering and wanting more grads to come working for them. Long lines of people waiting to get a chance to work with Raytheon, Lockhead, Northrup, etc.
Boeing fired them all so there is an oversupply of them in the market
Joking, maybe…idk
But space engineering should be booming right now, I’m surprised to see that as well. My specific degree is in aviation fields and I’m surprised it’s not on here. No one I know is using theirs.
Wouldn’t the engineering for space fall outside of aeronautics? There would be overlap if a craft is meant to enter and exit the atmosphere, but it seems like a trade that would require a large set of disciplines to do properly.
You’re right, but aerospace engineering is a very broad term, afaik, with many disciplines. Many do overlap between aviation and space flight, but I don’t really know if, hypothetically, a Boeing engineer could go work for spaceX, it would depend on the role I imagine.
Geographic limitations. If your spouse has a good job outside of those areas, then there’s no work for you.
Tied to govt contracts. I know lots of ppl that got laid off in 2008. I dk about now.
I’d be really interested to see the specifics of how that data is collected, but also fucking duh recent college grads are underemployed. Also, having that degree sets people up for career advancement as they gain experience and that educational background becomes even more of a prerequisite for the jobs they’re moving into
If you are employed in a junior job within the field you have been trained in, you are not underemployed.
What this graph shows however, is that there are a ton of degrees that seem to teach hardly any transferable skills. A sociologist without proper statistical training has almost zero value in the business world. And that’s a problem.
What this graph shows however, is that there are a ton of degrees that seem to teach hardly any transferable skills
This graph absolutely does not show this lol…how could you possibly derive that from this graph
And sociologists are absolutely trained in statistics
Maybe the business world is the problem.
Or maybe we just don’t need hundreds of thousands of people trained in liberal arts.
I’m not trying to defend businesses here, but there’s only so many places for people who are trained in over-analyzing paint and clay.
Mathematics is liberal arts. So is economics.
Dumbass me saw “unemployment” and “underemployment”, and went “huh? un-de-re-mployment? what’s that?? that’s a lot of prefixes”. Turns out it’s just under-employment
That’s kinda like how “underbed” was for me; like, how do you underb something? Or derb it in the first place, for that matter?
Un-redeployment. When you put boots on the ground, but it’s not a war
Under-redeployment. When you don’t put enough boots on the ground and it’s still not a war.
“Underemployment is when workers are working less than full-time” that’s such a shitty reference, I’ll take every opportunity to NOT work 40 hours a week even if it means getting by with less money. Let me experience life a little, goddamn
I double majored in History of Art and Philosophy for my undergrad.
Surprisingly philosophy led on quite neatly to a career in software development. Especially analytic philosophy is all about breaking down complex problems into premises and a conclusion. Sometimes it’s algorithmic in the sense that premise 4 might refer you back to premise 2.
That’s super interesting to me, any references for a software person who wants to find some overlap with philosophy? I know very little about the subject.
I suppose studying basic formal logic would be a good place to start because that is the place where there is the most overlap. In philosophy an argument can be ‘valid’ by conforming to certain conditions such as
P1: All men are mortal P2: Socrates is a man C: Socrates is mortalThis is an example of deductive reasoning where the form or structure of the argument guarantees the conclusion to be true. Process is called ‘deductive’ reasoning where a conclusion is drawn from the truth of the premises. The ancient Greeks called this a syllogism.
Computer programs are similar in the sense that they are using formal logic with tokens that represent variables to the compiler. Given these arguments exist; we can perform these operations and get a specific result.
As an aside the counterpart to deductive reasoning is inductive reasoning. That’s where the premises may be true but the conclusion might not necessarily follow from them. People throw around the word ‘fallacy’ quite often online but essentially every fallacy is just an example of inductive reasoning where the premises do not guarantee the conclusion. Philosophers study different types of formal fallacies like ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ (because this happens, something else ought to happen) since there are different ways where combinations of premises can lead to an untrustworthy conclusion.
Intriguingly all science is speculative and uses inductive reasoning where we infer from what data we gain in experiments to a conclusion of what might be happening, however there is no logical guarantee that experiment results will be true. There’s even a thesis called pessimistic meta induction which states that: Given all scientific theories we held in the past have been proven false (or refined to a slightly different conclusion), we can safely assume that every scientific theory we currently hold is ‘false’ in some sense.
This is a good introduction to formal logic. It was required reading in my undergrad - https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Paul-Tomassi-Logic.pdf
Physics
Most depressing colleague I ever had was a dude who’d done a masters by research discovering new planets with powerful instruments that detected tiny variations in the light levels in far off solar systems. You could discover new heavenly bodies based off the cadence and degree of occlusion that occurs for that solar system’s star.
Basically this guy was no longer able to progress with astrophysics because the competition for positions/funding was so intense. He’d ended up as a software dev but all he talked about was new planets and he spent every lunch break looking at the raw data from these instruments which were published into the public domain that day.
He had a calling but the world had torn him away from it.
The fate of most academics. After a falling out with my phd advisor, i went a completely different route and managed to build a solid career.
Yeah im terrified that’ll be me oneday. Im also probably gonna get my PhD in either physics or astrophysics
I find that a bit misleading. Me and my gf both work only 4 days a week (aka not full-time). I’d say it barely makes a difference in our field when we’re tired on Fridays rotting at work or home.
Graphic Design being low demand has always confused me.
Graphic design is really hard to do well, and there’s a ton of legitimate need for it. After all, every business needs a logo and a few print ads.
But maybe there’s just not much demand for doing it well?
I could believe that. I’ve seen plenty of small business logos and print ads that were obviously done by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Or is there just a massive oversupply because that’s where all the extra art history students retrain?
I’m going to guess it’s not oversupply, because, again, those mom and pop businesses would have decent logos, right?
I dunno… I’m genuinely curious how a trade that’s that hard to get really good at has such high unemployment.
I guess the aerospace degree has the same thing going, according to this chart.
Because nobody wants to pay for it. “That’s easy, I’ll just do it myself”. Surprisedpikachu when it doesn’t go over as desired, but they saved a couple bucks.
Even if every business got a professional logo , they only need to do it once. And for small places, the budget for getting a logo is maybe a few grand tops. New businesses are created all the time, but is it enough to keep all of the graphic designers busy?
Web stuff needs graphic design also, and movie industry
I would say AI is coming for them - but then I am reminded of all the stories about nightmare clients pestering graphic designers endlessly for nonsense changes. Then I am reminded of Terminator and fear this is why the machines rise up.
Why is physics on this list? Seems a bit of of place
Because physics graduates have a high unemployment rate compared to other degrees. So how is it out of place? Not all stem degrees are good for getting a job. There aren’t many careers where a physics degree gives you directly marketable skills. You either go into physics research or astronomy research, and you need a phd for both. Most people with a physics degree end up having to spend time specializing in something else.
Why would a company hire an engineer with a physics degree when they can an engineer with an engineering degree? Physics is a very generalist field.
I majored in physics, even living in a country with a ton of technology companies. There are only so many research labs, and only very few companies want dedicated physics people. Often they just want to run a mechanical simulation known as FEM, they hire mechanical engineers for it.
Also, physics is very broad. While companies are usually looking into a specific topic. If you didnt happen to stumble in the right area of physics you might not have valuable knowledge for a company. Often a Physics education is not even focused on deepening a specific topic, but more on how to solve complex problems. In my opinion that can be applied to many problems we face today, if given the chance.
Physics education is based on the idea of a renaissance man, one who knows how everything works. Companies simply don’t care about that.
A lot seems out of place.
Is it useful to know that liberal arts majors are 7.9 unemployed without the larger context of how many liberal arts majors there are?
I might not be explaining myself well, but it feels like there is an error with the chart. Not exactly the same type of write you get from every map of x thing just being another population density map, but the same type of error for not adjusting for that type of thing.
I’m other words, I thought liberal arts was the most common major so I would’ve expected it to be closer to the national average.
The total number of LA holders is irrelevant since everything is presented on a percentage basis. The fact that it isn’t close to the national average is evidence of being different from the overall population.
Although, I suppose an overabundance of LA degree holders could lead to higher unemployment. But that doesn’t change the conclusions that can be drawn from the chart.
You’d think people with engineering degrees would have a wide swath of jobs to choose from. Physics is a huge field, and the math is applicable to a lot of things. Same with aerospace. I’d think aerospace people could get jobs in the military or automotive industries. Not just NASA or Boeing.
The Liberal Arts being a joke degree holds up.
Only if the only point of college is to get a job.
There’s more to life than work and a good liberal arts degree exposed you to a lot of it.
… It’s not worth 200k of debt but it’s great to learn.
Only if the only point of college is to get a job.
When it comes with that 200K of debt the ONLY point is to get a job. Employers want employees with degrees because degrees come with debt and people who are in debt are less likely to quit a shitty job.
I was almost an art history major. Majored in philosophy instead. I’m a software engineer.
CS major. Do not code. Forgot all of it. Ironically ended up back in software tech somehow. Still no coding though.
CS major. Do not code. Somehow project management. Send help.
Trying to work back to something more technical but the salary cut seems bleak for my realistic rusty skill level. Will probably have to go for a masters of some kind.
