What I would study

How do you prepare yourself for a fast-changing world?

It is late January. Soon, thousands of wide-eyed first-year students will descend on university campuses around South Africa, eager to gain new knowledge and skills that will help them prosper.

But many will find the road to riches paved with potholes. According to a March 2021 report by the Department of Higher Education and Training, one in ten students at in-person universities in South Africa won’t make it past their first year. (It is one in four at distance learning institutions.) For those who get over that hurdle, things don’t necessarily get easier. Fewer than a third of students will graduate within the minimum three years; most take four to five years to complete their degrees, adding a significant financial burden on the state and themselves. And the sad truth is that one in every five students that enroll over the next few days will never complete their degrees.

But for many first-year students, these issues are not at the forefront of their minds. Their primary concern, besides figuring out how to pay for their education in an increasingly underfunded sector, is deciding what to study. With so many options available, it's no wonder they're feeling overwhelmed!

Choosing a course – a career – can seem incredibly daunting. Few eighteen-year-olds have had to make a decision as important as this one: their choice of degree will affect who they meet (and perhaps marry), whether and where they find work, and their income and thus ability to do the things they value. In short, this one decision will play a big part in the type of life they choose to live.

Now, first, it is perhaps useful to say that things are never so path dependent, especially not in the world we live in today. People change careers all the time. Students often change degrees. As you update the information available to you, you update the decisions you make. (Perhaps, like me, you’ve never heard of something called economics but then realise after the very first class that this is what you want to do for the rest of your life.) So, don’t be frightened into paralysis.

Rather, approach your choice of degree by weighing up three factors. First, will this expose me to courses that will teach me transferable skills? Second, is this something where people I admire are working – and where more and more such people are moving to? Third, and probably most important, is this something I will find fulfilling?

The frustration for many students (especially if they are first-generation university students) is that they simply don’t know anything about the various subjects. As I already noted, I had never heard of economics before I attended my first class. It is entirely unreasonable to expect a first-year student to know the syllabus of physiology, palaeontology, pharmacology and polymer science courses.

Which is why it is best to get advice from as many people as possible, including your columnist. Here’s a question I’ve thought about the last few days: What would I study, knowing what I know now, if I was a first-year student again? And let’s assume I can design my own course from scratch.

The first subject would be a no-brainer. Statistics is now at the centre of almost any discipline – or should be. Because data is ubiquitous, the ability to extract understanding from the billions of numbers created every instant will be at the core of most future professions. From analysing syntax in linguistics, to understanding voting patterns, to determining the soil quality on a farm, to creating visualisations in business reports, to testing vaccine efficacy, knowledge of statistical methods is key.  And then I have not even mentioned more advanced applications, like machine learning and other artificial intelligence tools. I’d make sure to sign up for a course in statistics, at the level that fits your ability.

The second might not be something you’ve thought much about. It might not even be a standalone course at most South African universities. But it is something I think will become increasingly necessary in guiding our individual decisions and shaping societal outcomes. Ethics. Ethics, in short, is the study of what is morally right and wrong, or good and bad. Should we use animals for scientific research? Should we use surveillance technology to monitor citizens? Should we use genetic engineering to create designer babies? Should we be able to sell our organs? Ethics helps us to build a framework to answer these difficult questions.

And, of course, economics. Yes, I’m biased, but not unreasonably so. Economics is about understanding human behaviour, either at the household level (micro) or at the country level (macro). Economists constantly think hard about how we build a prosperous society: we can be rich, and yet many of us are not, so what can be done about it? I tend to think this is one of the most important questions of our time.

The added advantage is that studying economics is also likely to boost your salary. And you don’t have to believe me: A recent paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics asks, ‘Will studying economics make you rich?’ In short: yes! The authors compare two groups of American students. Students in the one group – the treatment group – performed just well enough in high school to be allowed into an economics programme. The second group – the control group – just failed to reach the cut-off that allowed them access to the programme. The authors then track both groups of students’ labour market outcomes. They find that those in the treatment group earned $22 000 (or 46%) per year more than those in the control group. That is a sizeable bonus!

There are many other interesting fields of study, of course, subjects that broaden our understanding of the natural world and human society. And, in truth, despite a high unemployment rate, South Africa is in dire need of skilled graduates in various fields, as indicated by the list of critical skills published by the Department of Home Affairs in August 2022. A student who excels in any degree program, from art history to zoology, should be able to find employment opportunities in the job market.

The future is uncertain. My advice for first-year students still unsure about what to study: choose a degree that matches your current interests to a set of core disciplines, like statistics, biology, philosophy, mathematics, languages or economics. Don’t be afraid to get advice from as many people as possible. And don’t be afraid to sample different courses – even if that means sitting in on a few lectures that you haven’t yet signed up for. The more information you have, the better decision you can make. And that is ultimately good for your wallet, and for the national purse.

An edited version of this article was first published on News24. Photo by Nqobile Vundla on Unsplash.