05: Why Your College Major & Where You Go to School Don’t Matter With Vivek Wadhwa [Main T4C Episode]

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Vivek Wadhwa’s advice to parents who ask him what their kids should study in college to be guaranteed a job when they graduate?  Let them study what makes them happy.  What are they interested in studying, he asks parents?  This episode is chockablock with sage advice and revealing insights into one of our world’s deepest thinkers about how to become a truly fulfilled, successful and happy student/professional — at college and beyond. Vivek is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering at Silicon Valley. Professor Wadhwa researches exponentially advancing technologies that are soon going to change our world.  These advances–in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, computing, synthetic biology, 3D printing, medicine and nanomaterials–are making it possible for small teams to do what was once possible only for governments and large corporations to do: solve the grand challenges in education, water, food, shelter, health and security. Prior to joining academia in 2005, Professor Wadhwa founded two technology firms. He is also the author of the new book:  Your Happiness Was Hacked: Why Tech is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain—and How to Fight Back as well as The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future and of Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE

• How research Wadhwa led showed that among 652 US-born CEOs/heads of product engineering at 502 tech companies: 92% hold BAs & only 2% hold degrees in mathematics (4:23)
• Why you need to learn to love learning because if you don’t, you will be unemployed. (11:16)
• Why technology is now a basic skill T4C Java Junkies need to learn just like reading, writing and math. (14:36)
• Listen to the T4C Espresso Shots episode #28 to get Vivek Wadhwa’s best career advice to help Java Junkie’s break into the field of disruptive technology for social good