Do More Lucrative Majors and Career Paths Get More Support From Colby?

There is no doubt that social class is taboo. It makes people uncomfortable; it makes them nervous; and it makes them angry. As students in “Social Class and Schooling,” we decided to create an interactive, inquiry-based project designed to get people thinking about social class and confront these uncomfortable — yet significant — realities. For our project, we decided to look at the relationship between a particular student’s major, career path, and the support they receive from the College. Wanting to examine this potential correlation, we posed the question, “Does the College provide more support to students who are pursuing presumably lucrative careers?”

A common theme we see on campuses around the country is that buildings that foster majors that go into tech, finance, and business fields tend to be the newest, clearly showing large amounts of investment, while stereotypically less lucrative majors are located in buildings that are older and less furbished. Intuitively, schools would want to invest more in students with higher chances of giving back to the school, so we wanted to see if this were the case at the College through career path support networks. 

From the start, we anticipated that the College’s services would devote more energy to supporting students who would predictably be more significant alumni contributors in the future. With this in mind, we hypothesized that those who are pursuing higher-paying careers would receive more adequate resources. 

We began by gathering data through a survey designed to give us a multi-dimensional view of how and where the College provides career resources. We asked students questions such as “How proactive have you been in using Colby’s career resources?” and “How satisfied have you felt with Colby’s employment support?” After collecting all the survey responses, we analyzed the data and made charts depicting satisfaction with the College’s resources by career path. 

During Social Class Awareness Week, we are hosting an interactive table from Apr. 20 to 21 in the Spa. At our table, you will find multiple poster boards with the data we collected. After viewing our data, you can then share your thoughts with us on an interactive poll, reinforcing our findings or disagreeing with them. We really hope you stop by to look at our inquiry project, and we are excited to share our thoughts with you all! This event is hosted by Suzy Kang, Jennifer Ko, Izzy Moore, and Aidan O’Brien.

~ Suzy Kang `23, Jennifer Ko `26, Izzy Moore `24, and Aidan O’Brien `24