At a school where ambition is assumed and adulthood feels like a deadline, students evaluate career paths less by passion and more so by the paycheck they promise.
That logic explains the steady pull toward financially safe careers: STEM, law, finance and economics. These fields are framed as rational choices rather than personal ones, valued primarily for their earning potential and perceived stability.
“Recently, there’s been a pre-professional culture in my grade towards finance and finance-adjacent fields,” senior Victor Fang said. “It’s a lucrative job, and it’s very easy to see the career trajectory. You do one thing, then you get promoted. It’s very linear, and it feels safe.”
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reinforces this mindset, reporting in 2025 that median annual wages for high-paying professional occupations, like STEM and law, exceed $100,000, while many other roles hover closer to $50,000, more than double the median difference between the two levels.
Statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York show that economics majors specifically earn among the highest median salaries of any undergraduate field. With a mid-career earning of $110,000, consistently outpacing humanities majors. When students encounter such impressive statistics — especially at Trinity, where many grow up economically insulated — salaries become less about meeting basic needs and more about achieving a skewed definition of financial security.
“I think kids who might originally only want to do humanities or are very interested in a very niche field get kind of pushed out of that into STEM just because all their friends are doing it or they hear online that engineers make more money,” Fang said.
As a result, humanities are dismissed as unstable. Research from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce shows an approximate $18,000 median annual earnings gap between STEM and humanities graduates.
“I would consider myself as one of the people who believe that money is a huge factor in it,” senior Benjamin Demetriades said. “I want to be comfortable. I don’t want to be having to pinch pennies super frequently. And so I think if I’m able to make enough money to the point where I don’t have to worry about financial strain at that point, I’ll be successful enough.”
Parental expectations intensify the pressure, steering students toward “safe” fields. These preferences surface in advisor conversations, course planning and the metrics schools highlight: college placement, starting salaries and competitive programs.
“At least by my parents, STEM was much, much more valued just because they preferred careers that they believed had good backing for careers and finances down the line, which of course makes sense,” Class of 2023 alum Austin Yuan said.
Over time, this phenomenon produces measurable consequences. According to the Johns Hopkins News-Letter, the number of humanities degrees awarded in the United States fell by nearly 25% between 2012 and 2020. Students are not simply losing interest; they are opting out under pressure.
“I think Trinity is a really good STEM school in Central Florida,” Fang said. “But also I think because of that culture, kids who might not have originally wanted to do STEM get kind of swept up in that culture.”
Even within traditionally high-paying fields, fear now shapes decision-making. Artificial intelligence has complicated ideas of stability.
“I (thought) job security meant more in terms of salary, like a job that can provide you a stable living,” Yuan said. “But I think now it’s just because it’s a vastly changing tech world and AI is coming through, and it’s replacing different jobs all across the board. … I think job security now also means how future-proof (it) is.”
Despite this uncertainty, students continue to treat certain paths as inherently safer than others. Law school debt, medical training pipelines and volatile tech markets are accepted risks when attached to prestige and high-earning ceilings.
“STEM, I would say, gets more praise,” Fang said. “I think if I were to say I want to become an engineer or if I want to go into college for nuclear physics versus, like history or gender studies, I think I would get two very different reactions from the person I was talking to.”
For some students, choosing their major is no longer about building a life they want. It is about avoiding a life they fear.
That fear is deeply tied to the environment, expectation and examples students see around them.
“If I didn’t have this environment around me, who knows what I would have done?” Yuan said.
