Why Science Majors Change Their Minds

It's Just Hard

But, it turns out, middle and high school students are having most of the fun, building their erector sets and dropping eggs into water to test the first law of motion. The excitement quickly fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg, an emeritus engineering professor, calls “the math-science death march.” Freshmen in college wade through a blizzard of calculus, physics and chemistry in lecture halls with hundreds of other students. And then many wash out.

Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.

Yep, saw a lot of friends and acquaintances quit school or change majors along the way.  One post-doc friend quit in the middle of the postdoc to go into finance.  Others left to get into medicine.  One person I know quit in mid career to make furniture.  There are (or at least were) easier and/or rewarding ways to make a living.