But again, the problem is that it takes until mid-career to really assess lifetime earning potential, and that's an extremely late indicator. If the winds change, we have to wait 10 years to find out.
We need a more fine-grained model of how those high earnings are happening and a way of tracking progress/bottlenecks along those tracks. E.g., I suspect the law job/salary crunch should be far more worrying than near-term earning potential of humanities majors.
It's also worth pointing out that salary isn't everything and our society would be utterly screwed if everyone optimized for lifetime earnings. Fortunately, plenty of people are optimizing a multi-objective function that includes QoL and job satisfaction; see e.g. teaching in particular. I'd have a hard time telling a teacher that they made a bad career choice by not going into tech or becoming a plumber, and I'd have an equally hard time arguing that teachers shouldn't be college educated.
But again, the problem is that it takes until mid-career to really assess lifetime earning potential, and that's an extremely late indicator. If the winds change, we have to wait 10 years to find out.
We need a more fine-grained model of how those high earnings are happening and a way of tracking progress/bottlenecks along those tracks. E.g., I suspect the law job/salary crunch should be far more worrying than near-term earning potential of humanities majors.
It's also worth pointing out that salary isn't everything and our society would be utterly screwed if everyone optimized for lifetime earnings. Fortunately, plenty of people are optimizing a multi-objective function that includes QoL and job satisfaction; see e.g. teaching in particular. I'd have a hard time telling a teacher that they made a bad career choice by not going into tech or becoming a plumber, and I'd have an equally hard time arguing that teachers shouldn't be college educated.