Blog Post #2

1. Update us where you stand on your topic idea​.  Has it changed since Blog #1?  Have you refined it somewhat  already?  For some of you, your topics may have changed completely from the first time you wrote; if so, talk about  why you changed the topic and why the new topic seems more promising. 

My topic remains the same, so far. Some problems that might come up is how Rutgers changed structure over time, which could skew the data. However if my thesis is still sound (that since people pay more for school they choose higher paying majors), the data should still portray what I want. Worst case scenario I can separate the data into different sections of the schools within Rutgers.

2. Tell us what you find online.​  Try a few Google searches, using various key terms.  What key terms seemed most  useful?  What sort of material did you find? What issues are discussed online? What does Wikipedia tell you? 

To be honest, maybe I can't search the correct terms or whatever, but anything I type in relates to unrelated topics on the price of college. Thanks to Professor Goeller, I have received some of the data I need in order to perform an analysis. I don't expect the analysis to say much, as I only have the data from 2002 - 2018, but it can give me a head start on formatting this for when I get the rest of the data. (1978 - 2001)

3. Tell us what books and scholarly articles seem important.  ​Try your searches at a few Google databases: Google  Scholar, Google News, and Google Books, for example.  Do a search at Amazon.com (you don’t have to buy any  books for this class, but this can be a useful search tool for identifying current books). Use the Rutgers library site. 

It's difficult to find. I'm sure I am not the only one with this idea but I can't seem to find anything. Maybe people just act irrationally in major choice, or maybe there is a macroeconomic process at work. Who knows.

4. What ideas about your topic did you get from this search?​ What issues seem important to the conversation  people are having about the topic? 

Again, no mention of this notion that I can find. Another issue that I might come across is the data for the average salary of the given major. I would like to use a single source so my analysis is sound, but I do not yet know If I should use present salary in my calculations for all years of data or if I could find year by year average salary data from a single source for all years (unlikely). This is important because majors have been more profitable in the past, but have often been outdated by new technology or culture.

5. What resources did you uncover?​  ​Give us at least two specific references or links to things you found​ and  explain why they seem useful.  The explanation is as important as the links! 

https://oirap.rutgers.edu/instchar/Factbook_PDFs/FactBooks-Archive/FactBookArchive.html

• Gives me the data (2002-2018) in a very clean form that I can easily copy and use to do data analytics on

Rutgers since 1945: A History of the State University of New Jersey, by Paul G.E. Clemens

• Provides useful information on "campus dissent" which means I can use it to talk about the introduction of new campuses and how that might apply to certain points in the data.

https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data

• I have no idea how to use this resource yet but once I get some free time but I think it could help illustrate the changing cost of college and I can use this data for visualization purposes. 

6. Did you find any controversies over your topic?​  What are the two sides (or more) of the debate?

The passages we read for this class could be pretty controversial to my claim. Most of the stuff we read anyways was on how kids go to college for independence from their parents and major choice is kind of a thing on the side.