Choosing the right path for your life is a timeless question that calls out to all of us. Many of us look back at the things we chose to study in college and wonder if we made the right choices.
Sometimes we study things that have limited applicability in the world we find ourselves in just a short while later.
This has been true for numerous fields of study, especially in recent history. Those who studied publishing were probably disappointed by the rise of digital media. Those who studied film photography were probably disappointed to see digital cameras largely replace film.
This isn’t a new phenomenon either. This is a phenomenon that has been going on for thousands of years. With each technological innovation, entire fields of endeavor and whole strata of jobs are lost – this is what disruptive technology is. However, some degrees have remained surprisingly relevant through all of it. In this, we will examine why STEM degrees will always retain their value and why prospective students should look to SUNY Math & Science degrees.
Why Choose Math and Science Degrees
Math and Science are relevant because they are fundamental to our technology. They exist and concern themselves with the primordial, underlying truisms of physics and math from which all other technology is built. This means that a student of biology or physics or mathematics could literally step into a time machine, come out 50 or 100 years later, and the information they have accumulated is still relevant.
The same would be valid for a visitor from the past. Math was still math 100 years ago or more, and the inventions they produced gave rise to all we have now. The visitor would need to catch up on some advancements and learn a few new tools, but their decision to study math or science would have served them well as they more easily grasped the underlying technologies. In a practical sense, this means that no matter where your career takes you, a SUNY math & science degree will always have value.
Technological Advancements Make Math and Science Degrees Even More Important
Some might argue that all technology has undergone iterative changes and incremental improvements for some time. Any way you slice it, the rate of change is slowing down.
In 1990 a 32bit 25 mhz 386SX was a fast processor – and cost a lot of money too. By 1993 the software being written for Pentium couldn’t run on 386s and many 486s either. This rate of change in CPUs and amongst computers broadly was monumental.
Fast forward to today, and in 2023 a ten-year-old computer might be one with 12 processor cores, 64bit with power to spare, and capabilities most users will never even reach. This represents the rate of change slowing down as new technology (computing) was invented, improved over the course of many decades, and finally reached a state of maturity.
A science or a math degree today is hardly at any risk of becoming obsolete. In today’s world, those degrees may well represent the only stable topics that have proven themselves indispensable to modernity.
SUNY Math & Science Degrees Are A Pathway To a Stable Career
A lot of factors go into deciding what major a student decides to enroll in. Perhaps the biggest is future career prospects. With a SUNY math & science degree, you are guaranteed a stable career, and a degree that can be widely applicable in hundreds of industries.