Eighty percent of college-bound students have yet to pick a major, and many students will change majors two or three times once they are at their chosen institute of higher learning.

Unless you are going into a specialized field such as engineering or nursing (I will argue that an Education degree is useless for those wanting to teach, so I won’t include them in this category), I don’t see how one’s undergraduate major is of any great consequence. Students of any major can apply to law school or medical school (assuming you have the needed science courses, in the case of the latter). And, how many of us are actually in a career now that precisely uses the knowledge gained from our field of study? I think I could tell one of my advisees that he lacks an hour of science for general education requirements without having my Russian Area Studies degree to back me up. Students are so concerned with picking the right major for success, when real success will depend so much more on getting job/internship experience, committing to hard work and meeting the right people.

The University of Wisconsin system has implemented a great plan to encourage students to stop hanging around the campus and graduate already! Students who go more than 30 hours (a whole year of extra work) above the needed credit hours to graduate will face doubled tuition. Chronic coeds who stick around that long are limiting spaces for new students who are ready to get started. Bravo, Wisconsin! Tell those kids to put away the hacky sacs and buckle down!