The Daily Orange recently published an article about a new study showing that black students are more likely to pursue lower-paying majors missed the point by failing to provide a holistic explanation of the study.

The author highlights black students pursuing a “low paying major” as though it’s such a awful thing to do is insulting to those pursue those majors. This suggests that onus of achieving economic and racial inequality in the country falls on black college students giving up on their interests and choosing majors based on profitability.

Obviously everyone wants financial stability, but you don’t need to study in a STEM field or health and business. A reasonable amount of financial stability can be achieved in the “intellectual and caring professions” that majority of the students in the study pursued. Students who pursue this path know what they’re getting into and if that’s what they want to pursue then so be it.

Nicole Smith, who is bizarrely the only human source quoted in the story, touches on why African-American students leave STEM majors but doesn’t engage with social and political factors behind it. If a student doesn’t feel appreciated or part of the class, then that’s a problem with the class and not the students to want a comfortable learning environment.

She also says that more black students should choose lucrative jobs so there is more balance and representation in the job market without addressing the responsibility employers have in recruiting diverse candidates. A more effective way to address inequality in the job market is closing the wage gap between people of color and white employees, as well as between male and female employees.

White students are rarely, if ever, called out for choosing less lucrative majors. Judging by the demographics of the journalism — another “low paying major” — classes I took at Newhouse it doesn’t seem to be stopping them either.  I chose my major based on what interested in me and black students should not be patronized for wanting to do the same.

Maybe in the future, The D.O. will publish a story about how likely white students choose their majors based on lucrative career paths instead of what interests them. In the meant time, I hope The D.O. reconsiders practicing lazy journalism like this in the future.

Rahimon Nasa
Newspaper and Online Journalism, International Relations
Syracuse University ‘15

Published on March 8, 2016 at 11:15 pm