He's planning on a double major: Linguistics and something technical: Math, Science or Engineering. I keep encouraging him to pursue Engineering because of the strong job outlook.
I read good things about careers in math, but when I looked further I found that although the number of jobs for math majors is growing very rapidly, the actual number of jobs is still insanely small - it's in the HUNDREDS. I'm not including teachers, of course, but that's because . . . who would want to do all that work and then only be a math teacher???
There are still a lot of Computer Science jobs, but those are going to vanish as hardware rapidly moves to the cloud and programming continues to be outsourced to India. Computers were good for my generation, but not for his.
I think Biology and Engineering are where it's at, job-wise.
He doesn't want to be a lawyer. He doesn't want to be a doctor (I think he's a fool for that.) Linguistics fascinates him, but I only see that leading to a government job (Pentagon, C.I.A., NSA, etc.), and I've been trying to convince him to avoid government like the plague.
Many of the Ivy Leagues don't require students to pick a major until well into their 2nd year. Harvard encourages Freshmen and Sophomores to explore as many careers as possible and allows students to take courses in virtually anything. One of the things I love about that school is that M.I.T. is just a twenty minute walk up the street, and students at either school are allowed to take classes at the other. That gives them a LOT of flexibility in what major(s) to pursue and which authorities they can associate with.
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