You will not find any statistics or quotes from an expert in this post. I am simply sharing my experience, my observations and my conclusions.
Fourteen years ago, as a high school freshman, I had to choose between three options, which already way too early started shaping my life a little bit. In the French education system, I was given the choice between Scientific path, Literature path and Economics path. Already at that time, it was common knowledge that picking the scientific option was likely to give you more flexibility in choosing a college few years later. I suppose my parents and I did not question the common knowledge and I am now glad we did not.
Eventually, I did get very much interested in sciences, went on with undergraduate and graduate schools in engineering and landed a first job in a large corporate company and later on in a SME, both in fairly technical sectors, X-ray imaging and aerospace.
I never regretted those choices which, thanks to my parents, were always mine to make. Not because I knew what I wanted to do with my life from the start, and I did not, but because choosing a technical study path let me more easily adapt, change and postpone those life-changing decisions.
If as a high school student or later on as a college student, you cannot decide where your heart lies, in technical or non-technical studies, a good way to look at it is to ask yourself which one of the two would be the most difficult to later on come back to, should your first choice not be the best fit for you.
Let's assume you would opt for a technical education and go full steam in the scientific college track, to later start a career as a technician, a scientist or an engineer. After some years, you might be given the choice to step out of the technical side to, for instance, grow toward a management role. There are many reasons and examples of why one would decide to do so, but the fundamental bit here is that this choice is made available to you. After further business education, even an MBA or simply hands-on learning, you might grow into a very accomplished business executive.
Now on the other side of the spectrum, let's assume you have chosen to focus from the start on business studies, or any other career path not involving deep technical knowledge into daily tasks. It is safe to say that it is unlikely or far less common that you may be given, after some years as a business executive, an opportunity to switch to a purely technical position as an engineer or scientist without the appropriate technical background. While it is possible to restart technical studies from the very beginning while being already a professional, the possibilities to completely reorient your career in that direction are therefore likely to involve significantly more additional study time than for the opposite path.
The way the current continuous professional development programs are set up also clearly follows this trend. Many institutes offer MBAs and Executive MBAs for middle managers or executives coming from technical or non-technical studies to further develop their management, decision-making, financial and marketing skills. While fewer institutes are available for business executives who decide to turn their career around and head to the lab benches.
A similarity can be found in the writing industry, for instance. Many scientists (and other types of professionals of course) have become really talented writers, technical writers or journalists. On the other hand, professional writers who set their education and career in that direction from the start are less likely to drop it all one day to become physicists. Certainly not because they would not be capable to do so, and I am convinced they would, but simply because of the way the education systems and professional development programs are set up: Fewer "bridges" are made available in that direction, as opposed to the other.
I am certainly not talking about what is the best choice of career, which job is better or which study path will get you the best possible career and salary. Those subjects are way too subjective to be advised out of context, and I am far from qualified for that. However, if you are in a stage of your life when you need to make a choice and simply cannot decide between all the great career paths standing at your reach, like art, science, business, law, etc., then technical studies might give you this extra time to figure this out and let you choose later on what career might be the best for you after all, should science not be the one.
It is quite a luxury to know very young what we want for our life, assuming we are lucky enough to have this choice made available to us. Not everyone knows from day one; some may become more successful when starting early in a given career track without looking back, and some may be able to capitalize on what their current career taught them before applying it in their new direction.
As said in the first line, I am certainly not an expert. I did however have to make some of those choices, stepping away from pure technical work, or teaching myself some skills I did not have natively to be able to realize some new projects I truly wanted to accomplish, in a totally new field.
Last important thing: Your professional environment might prevent you from switching from a non-technical role to a technical role, but back home you may be the best DIY maker, and self-made engineer your employer would in fact dream to hire. Which is why I am not talking about skills and abilities in this post, but more about the options the professional world will make available to you, if you decide to choose either one of those paths. If however you decide to create your own business all the keys are in your hands.
So if your kid or teenager is still undecided about high school and college choices, you have three days left before Father's GeekDad Day to turn her/him into a tech geek....
