2026-10-22: I found these old writings when I was cleaning up some stuff and added them here.
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The topic suggests that college students should choose their field of study on the basis of job availability in that field. What I suggest is instead of looking only upon job availability they should focus on a myriad of things and make a careful judgement.
The first two thing which decide whether someone should choose their field of study is the amount of interest they have in that field and more on the amount of disinterest they have for work in that field. It is of utmost necessity that one should have interest in their field of study and work. But what is a more important factor to consider is how much disinterest they have for that field, if someone sees that a certain field has the highest amount of job opportunities accessible to them after studies but it does not make any sense for them to take that field if they are highly disinterested by the work in that area, it will make their life miserable.
Next comes the question of what do they want to do in their life after they have completed their studies. If they want to further pursue research in their field then it doesn't make any sense for them to choose any field other than the one they want to research in. On the contrary if they want to do anything else then there come a different set of parameters to base one's choices upon. Suppose one wants to work as a software developer professionally, on the surface it would appear that the best way is for them to pursue a degree in software development. But it is a field in which the academic world hasn't been able to keep up with the changes happening in professional world and therefore going to college for studying software development doesn't make much sense. The best way for such students would be to either not attend college at all or take some other field where they would like to get in-depth knowledge as their major in college and learn software development on the side from all the online resources available.
One should also consider the situation and needs of their family above all. What I am implying by that is if you are not financially strong and your family can hugely benefit from your income then you definitely should place job availability above all. In that case you should also consider whether you attending college is actually going to make that much of a difference to justify spending such an enormous amount of money. Taking the example of software development from last paragraph, one can become just as good of a software developer (if not better) studying online as one can with a degree in Computer Science.
In conclusion all I would like to say is to not base choice of field of study on only the availability of jobs in that field, one should consider every aspect of it before choosing their field of study. It is because whatever choice you make you will be investing four years of your time in that field and time is our only resource that we can only spend and can never earn more of.