Do a STEM degree if you want a job

Accounting will also be automated heavily in the future

I'd just like to point out that medicine and dentistry (and I'd imagine veterinary science) are *not* STEM degrees, and are not classified as such by most authorities.

Whatever.....

This is 2016.......

Ultimately you should pursue what you're interested in, that way you are more likely to succeed in that field and also be happy during uni

no. you really shouldnt.

I am highly interested in football - but I am a bloody good educational consultant.

Should I pursue football? Where I am not good enough to ever be a player, and other roles are very competative with limmited points of entrance?

Or should I go into education, where there is good money to be made, a stable living, and I am very good at it (even if It does not get me as passionate as football?)

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The life advice 'Do what you love'

Is awful advice for most people, and its spouted far to much by parents these days.

Just because you love something does make you more likely to succeed in that field then if you did not like it.. but it does not make you more likely to succeed in that field, then another one you may be more skilled at.

And trust me, being happy at uni means nothing. Its 3 years of your life... its tiny compared to the next 30+ years of work.. if you cant stick out 3 years of tough work doing something you dont entirely like, then you are going to have a truelly awful time when you actually enter the real working world.

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The real answer advice for young people is to truly explain and understand the risks involved with following your passions. and to properly explore the alternative routes that involve solid qualifications and work, whilst also working on your passions as a side interest. After all.. most writers did not study litterature, most musicians did not studdy music, most photographers did not study photography etc.

For some, if enough talent is shown early enough, then 100% focus on their passion is a good move, but for most it is a hugely limmiting career decision that ends badly, and causes years of having to recover career prospects.

In today's world, graduate jobs are highly competitive and there are loads and loads of people with generic degrees like history or politics. Meanwhile, the engineering tech sectors are hiring and are future proof careers as well.

In the near future, more and more jobs will become automated. The ones that won't be are STEM jobs like engineering or tech or life sciences related stuff. So it is a very stupid idea to do a non-STEM degree now since you will be out of a job in the future and will also a truffle to even get a job in the first place, as shown by the large number of humanities students working in McDonald's.

STEM degrees give you proper skills that will get you a good job, as long as you're not an idiot in social situations. And those careers are less likely to be automated, unlike finance, banking, business, retail which are already replacing humans with AI.

So don't just do what you enjoy. Do something that will get you a job that's future proof.

doing a degree in a modern foreign language gives you near-native or native levels of fluency. some students even study more than one language at university.

I'm just making sure people know the reality before they make a decision. By all means do a non-STEm degree if you want but be prepared for losing your job to an algorithm. The future is in STEM careers.

That could be the case for some people but in general is not necessarily true at all. First, if your goal is to become a native speaker then I would say that you need to review your objectives because that is almost impossible. It's possible within three to four years to become 'moderately fluent' shall we say. But to expect to be at a native level is unrealistic in my view, especially as most of a language degree is not spent using the language 24/7 on a daily basis.

Second, it may vary from language to language. From my personal experience, British students who enrol on a Chinese degree have no chance of being fluent by the end of it. In fact, most of them who I met in Beijing absolutely wasted their year abroad and I'm sure it happens to many others in different language programmes too (perhaps to an even greater extent too, seeing as not many in China speak English anyway).

Nonetheless, I understand that I don't have personal experience of other languages so I cannot exactly tell you you're wrong. But I can at least make some conjecture about the idea of being a native speaker after a couple of years.

. What people on this website can't seem to grasp is that a degree isn't everything, employers just don't care that much, they really don't. They want hard working, social individuals who can function within a team.

Medicine is far too vocational to b e a STEM degree, and, whilst having a scientific basis, is more of an art than a science.

for modern languages wouldn't it be more cost effective to study the language on a course much less expensive then a degree then go to that country and work/live there so that eventually the language becomes second nature. seems cheaper then paying 9k a year. I mean I accept language can be a skill that pays quite a bit but I fail to see why you would need to spend so much money on getting those skills when that method would be much less efficient then just living in the country.

for modern languages wouldn't it be more cost effective to study the language on a course much less expensive then a degree then go to that country and work/live there so that eventually the language becomes second nature. seems cheaper then paying 9k a year. I mean I accept language can be a skill that pays quite a bit but I fail to see why you would need to spend so much money on getting those skills when that method would be much less efficient then just living in the country.