Is it normal for people who choose a major in their university but later on with their jobs they do something that is complete unrelated to what they did in university?
September 2, 2025
Is that normal or uncommon? I hear people say that but I don’t know how true that is
38 comments
Id suggest it’s standard
Extremely common
My bachelor’s degree has precisely nothing to do with anything after my first job, which lasted about 8 months, Don’t sweat it though life takes you in different directions and you never know where you will end up so study what you will enjoy the most
I majored in anthropology. I’m a lawyer.
My bank teller has a biology degree.
Super common.
Turns out 18 year olds don’t know what they want to do with life and making them declare a major with basically no life experience is silly.
Business administration now in nursing (had to get another bachelors though)
It’s pretty usual.
But I’d encourage you to reframe it. A university is supposed to create generalists. It’s supposed to create people who can see the bigger picture, think critically about issues, write about those issues, and communicate with others.
It’s not tech school. You might learn about a very specific field, but the real skills of someone with a bachelor’s degree are reading, writing, researching, and considering different points of view. Someone has to have that overview, or else it’s just a bunch of people doing rote technical work.
Yes.
I started politics and I’m a marketer for startups.
I don’t think I’ve ever met an elite marketer who studied marketing.
Normal. My bachelors is in philosophy and no I do not teach philosophy 😁
A few years ago the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers did a survey which found that only about forty percent of engineering graduates ever worked in their field.
*Points at himself*
Math degree
I write SQL code and build dashboards for a living
Very common!
Psychology degree. Now I’m in advertising.
Study what you believe you have a profitable interest in. You will be surprised how you can bend that degree into a totally different career.
Fuck it … Or just find a job in something totally different and that becomes your career.
Think it’s a bit forced on most currently with the ai slaughter.
Yup
I’m a programmer. I have a PhD in philosophy. No degree related to programming (arts/science degrees).
In my circles, it is about 50/50.
I dont know about “normal”, but it happens sometimes. If you don’t go for specific job/career training, the process could be: Hmm, I like this field. I’m good at this. I guess I’ll major in this. Now what? I can’t get any decent paying, worthwhile job in this field. I guess I’ll go back to school for something else.
Among my friends:
Chem major later became an M.D.
Math major later went to business school for his MBA.
Electrical Engineer switched to convention planning.
Spanish major later went into Electrical Engineering.
Law school graduate hated the work, the people, and the toxic culture, quit the business, moved back in with his parents to “figure out what to do next”.
Ethnomusicology major later became a lawyer.
Ita only about 1 in 3 graduates that actually use their degree for work. Obviously its much lower if you are including non grads and people who change their major.
The number of people with a degree who work in their major is surprising low. Google says 27 to 40%.
I saw the numbers years ago about the percentage of students who make it through the first semester.
The number of student who actually graduate and the number who work in their field.
50 percent of people change their major at least once while in university and only 20 percent of university graduates are actually working in the field in which they trained.
These two numbers are a big reason why I think that no one should be able to attend university until they have spent at least a year working in a retail environment or other entry level job, at least a year travelling whether in their own country or other countries and before they are allowed to study a course, that they work in some sort of entry level position in that field. So no one would be able to study architecture until they had worked as a builders Laborer, study law until they had worked in the prison system, study medicine until they had worked as a hospital orderly.
I’d wager that beyond engineering degrees, it’s the norm. And even then, well, I work for a private lender doing oil and gas asset evaluations, and my degree is neither business nor petroleum engineering.
Well, by far most people don’t discover completely new fields of interest after their teenage years, so most will just work in line with their interests which also inspired their education.
You won’t see many history majors making it big in software engineering, and I wouldn’t consider journalism a completely different field.
I’d say it’s the norm.
I did a double major of Outdoor Recreation and History. After a few years working in outdoor education/professional guiding, I went back to school for my M.Ed focusing in Clinical Mental Health Counselling. I now work in that field.
Unless you are doing a degree that comes with a license (or near to a license) like nursing, law, engineering, medicine, teaching, etc., or are pursuing a career in academia, expect to work in a field unrelated to your major. There are obviously exceptions, but it’s perfectly normal to study something like History or Philosophy and end up selling insurance or something else unrelated.
Most people do not work in the field that they majored in for their undergraduate degree.
I read a study once that half of all STEM grads don’t even work in STEM jobs.
For most people, college is a check the box requirement in order to get a white collar job.
I majored in graphic design, and ended up in behavioral data analytics.
It’s not obvious, but there is a lot of crossover if you put your mind to it, and it’s that ability to find synergies between “primary” skillsets that makes someone valuable.
I also studied international security and terrorism, and again, plenty of cross pollination opportunities with behavioral analytics.
Yes.
I studied computer science and now I’m a fucking Industrial engineer/firefighter so yeah
Unless you get a degree like medicine or the law or engineering, it’s very common. I’m an actor and a singer with a degree in Spanish and History which I parlayed into a career in IT. Despite how people talk about it, a university is not a vocational school.
I have a BSc in biology. After graduation I worked Parks and Rec for 10 years, and now I’m in IT.
Very normal and extremely common, especially for those who only pursue an undergraduate degree.
Absolutely. A bachelor’s degree is just a competence check. It shows you can follow a reasonably difficult long term plan through to completion.
Probably more normal than not.
Majored in accounting, went into the Marine Corps as an Personnel Officer, then took a coding bootcamp after getting out, and became a Software Engineer.
Absolutely common. There’s plenty of cases of people pivoting, but also a lot of times it’s the result of learning, gaining more experience and moving up the corporate ranks. Engineers becoming project managers, accountants moving into management, both moving up to department/general manager, etc. See it all the time.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
BS Physics, Fortune 100 executive. The only tie with my degree is that I understand the gravity of situations.
38 comments
Id suggest it’s standard
Extremely common
My bachelor’s degree has precisely nothing to do with anything after my first job, which lasted about 8 months, Don’t sweat it though life takes you in different directions and you never know where you will end up so study what you will enjoy the most
I majored in anthropology. I’m a lawyer.
My bank teller has a biology degree.
Super common.
Turns out 18 year olds don’t know what they want to do with life and making them declare a major with basically no life experience is silly.
Business administration now in nursing (had to get another bachelors though)
It’s pretty usual.
But I’d encourage you to reframe it. A university is supposed to create generalists. It’s supposed to create people who can see the bigger picture, think critically about issues, write about those issues, and communicate with others.
It’s not tech school. You might learn about a very specific field, but the real skills of someone with a bachelor’s degree are reading, writing, researching, and considering different points of view. Someone has to have that overview, or else it’s just a bunch of people doing rote technical work.
Yes.
I started politics and I’m a marketer for startups.
I don’t think I’ve ever met an elite marketer who studied marketing.
Normal. My bachelors is in philosophy and no I do not teach philosophy 😁
A few years ago the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers did a survey which found that only about forty percent of engineering graduates ever worked in their field.
*Points at himself*
Math degree
I write SQL code and build dashboards for a living
Very common!
Psychology degree. Now I’m in advertising.
Study what you believe you have a profitable interest in. You will be surprised how you can bend that degree into a totally different career.
Fuck it … Or just find a job in something totally different and that becomes your career.
Think it’s a bit forced on most currently with the ai slaughter.
Yup
I’m a programmer. I have a PhD in philosophy. No degree related to programming (arts/science degrees).
In my circles, it is about 50/50.
I dont know about “normal”, but it happens sometimes. If you don’t go for specific job/career training, the process could be: Hmm, I like this field. I’m good at this. I guess I’ll major in this. Now what? I can’t get any decent paying, worthwhile job in this field. I guess I’ll go back to school for something else.
Among my friends:
Chem major later became an M.D.
Math major later went to business school for his MBA.
Electrical Engineer switched to convention planning.
Spanish major later went into Electrical Engineering.
Law school graduate hated the work, the people, and the toxic culture, quit the business, moved back in with his parents to “figure out what to do next”.
Ethnomusicology major later became a lawyer.
Ita only about 1 in 3 graduates that actually use their degree for work. Obviously its much lower if you are including non grads and people who change their major.
The number of people with a degree who work in their major is surprising low. Google says 27 to 40%.
I saw the numbers years ago about the percentage of students who make it through the first semester.
The number of student who actually graduate and the number who work in their field.
50 percent of people change their major at least once while in university and only 20 percent of university graduates are actually working in the field in which they trained.
These two numbers are a big reason why I think that no one should be able to attend university until they have spent at least a year working in a retail environment or other entry level job, at least a year travelling whether in their own country or other countries and before they are allowed to study a course, that they work in some sort of entry level position in that field. So no one would be able to study architecture until they had worked as a builders Laborer, study law until they had worked in the prison system, study medicine until they had worked as a hospital orderly.
I’d wager that beyond engineering degrees, it’s the norm. And even then, well, I work for a private lender doing oil and gas asset evaluations, and my degree is neither business nor petroleum engineering.
Well, by far most people don’t discover completely new fields of interest after their teenage years, so most will just work in line with their interests which also inspired their education.
You won’t see many history majors making it big in software engineering, and I wouldn’t consider journalism a completely different field.
I’d say it’s the norm.
I did a double major of Outdoor Recreation and History. After a few years working in outdoor education/professional guiding, I went back to school for my M.Ed focusing in Clinical Mental Health Counselling. I now work in that field.
Unless you are doing a degree that comes with a license (or near to a license) like nursing, law, engineering, medicine, teaching, etc., or are pursuing a career in academia, expect to work in a field unrelated to your major. There are obviously exceptions, but it’s perfectly normal to study something like History or Philosophy and end up selling insurance or something else unrelated.
Most people do not work in the field that they majored in for their undergraduate degree.
I read a study once that half of all STEM grads don’t even work in STEM jobs.
For most people, college is a check the box requirement in order to get a white collar job.
I majored in graphic design, and ended up in behavioral data analytics.
It’s not obvious, but there is a lot of crossover if you put your mind to it, and it’s that ability to find synergies between “primary” skillsets that makes someone valuable.
I also studied international security and terrorism, and again, plenty of cross pollination opportunities with behavioral analytics.
Yes.
I studied computer science and now I’m a fucking Industrial engineer/firefighter so yeah
Unless you get a degree like medicine or the law or engineering, it’s very common. I’m an actor and a singer with a degree in Spanish and History which I parlayed into a career in IT. Despite how people talk about it, a university is not a vocational school.
I have a BSc in biology. After graduation I worked Parks and Rec for 10 years, and now I’m in IT.
Very normal and extremely common, especially for those who only pursue an undergraduate degree.
Absolutely. A bachelor’s degree is just a competence check. It shows you can follow a reasonably difficult long term plan through to completion.
Probably more normal than not.
Majored in accounting, went into the Marine Corps as an Personnel Officer, then took a coding bootcamp after getting out, and became a Software Engineer.
Absolutely common. There’s plenty of cases of people pivoting, but also a lot of times it’s the result of learning, gaining more experience and moving up the corporate ranks. Engineers becoming project managers, accountants moving into management, both moving up to department/general manager, etc. See it all the time.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
BS Physics, Fortune 100 executive. The only tie with my degree is that I understand the gravity of situations.