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"One of my best friends from high school, Andrew, changed majors during his first semester at college. He and I had been fascinated by politics for years, sharing every news story we could find and participating in the Internet activism that was exploding into a new political force. Even though he was still passionate about politics, that was no longer enough. "I have to get practical," he messaged me one day, "think about getting a job after graduation. I mean, it's like my mom keeps asking me: What can you do with a degree in political science anyway?""

WASHINGTON - The United States is doing a lousy job at helping people get training and then find a job, argued a group of scholars who gathered here Wednesday to unveil a set of suggested reforms.

"In the last few years, leadership programs have sprung up in remarkable numbers at colleges and universities across the country. Institutions as diverse as Creighton University, Arizona State University, and Highland Community College, in Illinois, now offer leadership training and opportunities to their students. Some universities and colleges, like Gonzaga and the City University of Seattle, have developed degree programs in leadership, and many more such programs are being planned. It seems that every university Web page and presidential message now highlights leadership opportunities for students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels."

College students work for different reasons. Many take jobs to pay tuition and related educational expenses. Others work to afford electronic gadgets (often ones that we, their professors, don't yet know exist). Regardless of the reasons, many professors and administrators consider students' working during college to be an unfortunate distraction from what should be their primary focus: their academic studies.

"Matthew Gonzales Sanchez calls it his "midterm crisis." Halfway through the first semester of his freshman year here at Our Lady of the Lake University, he considered dropping out. He had failed all of his midterms. "It scared me because, man, I was giving it my all," says Mr. Gonzales Sanchez, 22. "I thought, 'What am I doing wrong? They say college isn't for everybody, and maybe that's me - maybe I'm not one of those people who belongs in college.'""

Undergraduates across the country are choosing to leave science, technology, engineering and math programs before they graduate with those degrees. Many students in those STEM fields struggle to complete their degrees in four years, or drop out, according to a 2010 University of California, Los Angeles, study.

WASHINGTON -- Whether they called them "near-completers" or "ready adults" or "stop-outs," the educators and policy experts gathered here today agreed that people who have earned most but not all of the credits they need for a college degree should receive more attention.

According to lore, the academic terms "major" and "minor" first appeared in 1877, in a Johns Hopkins University course catalog. By the middle of the 20th century, the specialized major had become standard practice at almost every American college. Sophomore year: Agonized conversations with parents, and then the declaration of a major. Junior and senior years: Upper-level course work. Graduation day: A diploma that certified your skills in psychology, or physics, or, as the old joke goes, underwater basket weaving.

For the most part, tomorrow's bachelor's-level majors will look very much like those offered by colleges today. But in interviews with The Chronicle, academic experts, business analysts, and economic forecasters helped identify five emerging areas of study.

The original, Post-World War II GI Bill has been both idealized as evidence of America as land of opportunity, and criticized for primarily benefiting white men while perpetuating racial and gender discrimination. So write Glenn C. Altschuler, a professor of American studies and dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions at Cornell University, and Stuart M. Blumin, professor emeritus of American history at Cornell, in their new book, The GI Bill: A New Deal For Veterans (Oxford). Altschuler and Blumin argue, instead, for a need to "gain a more dispassionate understanding of the bill's role in the shaping of postwar America" -- even up to the present day, as then-President Bush cited the legacy of the original GI Bill in the 2008 signing of a new, Post-9/11 GI Bill.

Community colleges are thrilled that President Obama is planning a major infusion of federal support for their job training programs, and they are talking about how this might best be done.

Every year at about this time I find myself humming, "It's May; it's May," a song from the musical Camelot. This year I took a closer look at the lyrics. I had missed the second half of a couplet mid-song: "The month of great dismay." For the many people on the job market who are still in limbo, that line has probably become a too-familiar refrain. Now that you've reached May without a job, what are your options?

Some professors don't let students see their Facebook pages. Some accept students' invitations but don't initiate them. Peter Juvinall insists students friend him.