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报考与升学 · After the exam · 6 min

Choosing a major: STEM vs. humanities in 2026

The safe answer has been engineering for two decades. That is not the only right answer.

The dominant advice from parents and teachers has been to choose a STEM major, particularly in engineering or computer science. This advice has been more right than wrong for the past twenty years.

But the labor market has softened in some technology sectors, and the graduating cohorts in computer science are now very large. A middling degree from a middling program no longer buys the salary premium it did a decade ago.

Meanwhile, some historically 'low-return' majors — law, medicine, teaching — have quietly improved their long-run outcomes as demand has caught up with supply.

The honest answer to 'what should I major in?' remains: choose a subject you can be good at, in a program that is well-regarded, and worry about the specific job later. Being top of your class in a less-hyped major usually beats being middle of the class in a fashionable one.

Interdisciplinary programs — computational finance, biomedical engineering, computational linguistics — are worth serious attention if your interests and school allow. They tend to be underpriced by cutoff scores relative to their long-run career flexibility.

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