When people ask students about their majors, and say, “What are you going to do with that?” writes Associate Professor of History Cecilia Gaposchkin in a Chronicle of Higher Education opinion piece, the questioners are missing the point.
These kinds of questions, Gaposchkin writes, “are based on the premise that choosing a major amounts to choosing a career path, and thus a particular financial future, a degree of security, a lifestyle, an entire identity. The choice seems synonymous with, ‘What do you want to do with your life?’ and even ‘Who do you want to be?’ As it is often understood, the decision is loaded in ways that are not useful for the student or for the mission of higher education.”
Gaposchkin is a Dartmouth Public Voices fellow.
Read the full opinion piece, published 5/21/15 by The Chronicle of Higher Education.