Don’t Let Society Pick Your Future
Selecting a Major Based on Passion and Interest, Not Trend
In August 2025, within days of each other, two articles were published— one by The New York Times and one by Newsweek— claiming the same thing. The New York Times’ article Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle and the Newsweek article A Popular College Major Has One of The Highest Unemployment Rates claim, if you can’t tell from their titles, that the computer science/computer engineering major is all dried up.
I have never been a fan of advice. I routinely remind my students the difference between advice and guidance so that they not only can spot the discrepancy but can appreciate, and hopefully adopt, the way in which they differ and the significant difference they have in impact and outcome. The idea of mentoring people is so that they become mentors to others.
Years ago, I warned against this: following trends and advice is not a smart long-term strategy. I routinely hear from students, choices and decisions made by others: what class to take next year, which school to apply to, what major to select. Almost always, the advice is bad. Faulty. Based on personal preference or experience instead of logic and objectivism. Based on some facts but not all of the facts.
The class to take next year shouldn’t be the easy one. The school you apply to shouldn’t be because your neighbors cousin went there and “they liked it.” And the major you choose should not be about what’s hot right now.
Everyone has the crystal ball and they can tell the future. I wouldn’t listen.
My singular goal at Chestnut is to give young people vision. I say this time and time again and I’m sure people are sick of me saying it but everything I do boils down to that. Giving a young person vision takes time, consistency, and relentlessness. You have to allow them to see themselves, analyze themselves, and reflect. You need to help them navigate their world and learn how to engage with subject matter, other people, and a complex world full of dissonance.
Students from both extremes of the spectrum— from the numb and disinterested to the overwhelmed and overworked— are not really in a position to choose a major, let alone pick one because someone told them it’s good for them. This type of blanket advice is not only unhelpful, but very problematic.
Individuals with passion are usually successful because they have created a purpose or mission for themselves. They have a genuine motivation toward their goals. Those goals don’t come from a social media influencer, a counselor at school, or a parent. They are real in the sense they are developed intrinsically (they come from within) and are rooted in a pursuit that is personal.
In 2020, with the move to remote everything, computers were on the minds of many. We all had to face the truth that a) a lot of work can be done remotely because of computers and b) that a permanent shift in the workforce was coming. I saw the trend toward computer science, even before the pandemic. I spoke to a group of administrators and professors at the University of Illinois Grainger School of Engineering on a virtual call and listened to their frustrations regarding computer science majors. In a nutshell: they were ruining their college. Why? Because students were flooding one of the best engineering colleges in the nation— which houses a plethora of engineering fields to choose from— with computer science (upwards of 80 percent of applicants, at the time of our call, were selecting computer science as their major).
So why did this happen? Because people take advice. A vast majority of these students were selecting it because they thought it was the future (i.e. would provide high-paying, stable employment) instead of choosing it because of genuine interest. In turn, the market became saturated, and now with AI being positioned to replace entry-level jobs, here we are.
The job of mentoring young people takes work. Guidance is not an easy thing to provide but necessary to us all. It takes patience, understanding, toughness, and care. It also takes a competent individual with knowledge, insight, and the ability to know the person they are talking to in a genuine way to help give them vision: to let them see themselves and their world with more light and color. Understanding how to engage with people and material, they find themselves intellectually curious and will then find many things interesting. That’s the problem I want my students to have: I want them to not know what to major in because they like and are good at many things. I want them to want to explore (and know how to). I definitely do not want them picking something because they didn’t know what else to pick (talking to you business majors). I want them to feel inspired to solve problems, to help others, and to push themselves to the limits of their capability.
Everyone has the crystal ball and they can tell the future. I wouldn’t listen.
