How to save money on the cost of a college major

I’ve been a college professor for several years and have been noticing a trend that, as a frugal person, I haven’t heard talked about. <br><br>Students have recently come into more control over their curriculum by being able to have a massive amount of choices in their majors, and that has led them to choose more expensive ones. <br><br>Long gone are the days of having a small set of major options. Colleges today have a virtually limitless number of majors, and it’s not uncommon to see students having majors where they can take different electives outside of their major department, from a bunch of different departments. <br><br>So, the end result is that students make their majors, and they make them extremely specialized. They have a lot of freedom to make choices in their major that they didn’t used to have before. <br><br>That freedom of choice has caused students to choose more expensive majors. <br><br>Before, for example, there might be a few choices for international majors: international business, international relations, international languages, and the like. Teachers would choose all the classes for the major, so students didn’t have to make choices about their electives.<br><br>Today, international majors have a lot of freedom to choose any class as their elective. They can choose extremely specialized classes that have high overhead (hiring professors, etc), that the college otherwise wouldn’t have or wouldn’t be able to justify the cost of.<br><br>For example, majors like computers in information systems, engineering, and many others require expensive equipment, applications of new technology, and hiring of professors that specialize in those fields. <br><br>In contrast, majors like biology, physics, and chemistry, that used to have high overhead, have become dirt cheap because the equipment and research has been around for years, and there’s economy of scale. Same with majors like English, math, and languages, where you don’t need to buy a lot of equipment for the curriculum. <br><br>So, because of that freedom of choice in majors, today you have majors where students are choosing classes that require more expensive technology, equipment, and professors, and they’re becoming more and more specialized. This is resulting in higher tuition. <br><br>The way to save money is to be more general with your major, and then you can get your specialization outside of college, with online courses or training. <br><br>There are also a lot of majors that give you a broad knowledge base, but specialized training isn’t needed for them. For example, you could major in English, get a broad knowledge of composition, meter, style, and how to articulate your thoughts, and then you could do specializations like copy writing, technical writing, content writing, etc, you name it. <br><br>So, all in all, if you want to save money on college, or if you want to save money on anything, always look for areas where you can go for the most general, most cost effective option that still meets your needs, and then get your specialization outside of college. Most fields are advancing so fast that it doesn’t matter what college courses you took, as the training is going to be mostly outside of college anyway.