I don't think we disagree. But it's likely that most people who end up in a Ph.D. program in Medieval Studies don't have many passions that are marketable: there's a lot of self-selection involved, and if the main subject of the article was also passionate in, say, EECS, I think it's a fairly good bet she would have chosen it. And passions in Medieval Studies are likely correlated with similarly un-marketable passions.

Though, maybe not. I could totally see someone being really interested in the structures of everyday life of medieval peasantry. Seems worthless, but you could totally parlay that into a profitable business doing furniture making or even green/natural/traditional housing.

I happen to share your passion for mathematics, but IMO, mathematics is actually a really poor example of "see, I have this passion that I can't make money out of, so I decided to become a developer".

The kind of money that is available in finance to someone with an advanced degree in math or physics is nothing short of astounding, with CS a distant second. Of course, there are all kinds of ethical compromises one must make for that.

But finance is not pure mathematics. It's more in the realm of applied mathematics. There isn't a whole lot of organic money (ie, not prize money) in pure mathematics.

Vladimir Arnold once said that there is no such thing as applied mathematics, only applications of mathematics. I think he was right.

i read the article twice. something in it really hit home with me. i have an offer from a prof at the local univ to pursue a math phd, and i might do so in the fall. my employer is ok with it, so i get to keep my job as well. however, its a fairly useless part of math ( useless in the GH Hardy sense ) in commutative algebra, specifically prufer groups ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%BCfer_group ) Now, I could do something "useful" and closer to finance, like stochastic calculus and stats and applied pdes & so forth...but my heart's not in those things. it feels like what i do anyway at work, so why would i do more of the same out of choice ? some of the comments below make me quite queasy. see, supply-demand is not a normative ideal. "One of the things you are are supposed to learn in economics is to avoid extremes. It is never all or nothing. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. And any way you jump has an opportunity cost because there are lots of things you would like to do with your limited means. So life is about trade-offs between rival objectives and you should optimise rather than maximise. " - so said Ross Gittins, and there's much more where that came from.

so this supply-demand thingy - its just something that happens to accurately describe the current state of the world, or more particularly the usa, especially in a bubble where it is infinitely more preferable to drop out of college and pursue ruby on rails than stick it out for a lousy diploma with your name on it. but if an athlete wanting to compete in the olympics mistakenly walked into a circus and started jumping through hoops, the crowd would throw coin at him. he can then collect that coin & settle down, get married, raise a family, get a drivers license, buy an automobile, pay municipal state and federal taxes & so on. but that just means he's become a clown, not an athlete. it is unfortunate that athletics is non sexy and training to be one involves grueling practice for years and years in isolation with no attention, no fame, no coin. but to dodge that work and passion because of what society chooses to value at a particular point in time is quite defeatist. none of what we do in cs today would have been considered useful in the 20s and 30s. church and turing would have clearly been better off working in the railroads or digging an oil well. yet they did what they did, and here we are... so, respect. you never know what the future holds for medieval history or english literature. i spent 3 semesters as a film major before i dropped out, and i must say it was a royal blast. repeatedly watching blondes strip and run towards the beach in their red bikinis while their breasts bobbed up and down, and the professor of film studies pausing the remote at the critical instant when a tad bit of cleavage was visible and saying "hey, this is why baywatch was a hit" and all of us students scribbling down "must place camera on sand level and tile up to show cleavage in beach shots" - i mean, nothing beats that. no amount of fancy research in STEM will match the pure adrenaline that passes for film studies. so there's a reason people in their youth pursue these non-lucrative fields, so lets not rain on their parade.

Completely true. My argument isn't to avoid the one thing you are truly passionate about. It's to understand the realistic results of that pursuit. If I hadn't gotten married while still in school I probably would have gotten the double major and perhaps gone to graduate school in mathematics. But my priorities shifted. I found choosing a close runner up in order to better my family life to be superior. Just as I would probably pass up on a promotion that would require me to travel 30% of the time. For me my family is a passion. For other people, having a nice house and nice toys is a passion. As you said, it's all about optimizing rival objectives. For me that optimization between my interests and having a family is software development. That is purely from my perspective, but it's a choice I have made and there are consequences of that choice, both seen and unforeseen.

And that's the point. Once we make a choice, we must accept the consequences. The article indicates there was some sort of agreement between life and students that says "If you study hard and get an advanced degree you won't have financial troubles." Since that wasn't the case, the world seems unfair. There is no such agreement. I'm not raining on the parade of students studying things that interest them. I feel strongly that their studies are beneficial and they become better people and better members of society because of them. But they were never promised financial success and not having it is not a breach of contract in any way shape or form. That's why this article rubs this crowd the wrong way.

actually, your point about being a film major is right on target. yea, it was awesome for 3 semesters, but if you'd spent 10 years getting a phd in that and then discovered that you aren't going to make coin, then yes, may your parade be rained on.