My experience, based on years in and out of academia, is that both students and professors vastly overestimate the connection between a major and a career. If you speak with successful professionals 20 years after their college graduation, you find that their majors are really kind of random. Among the people I talked with today, for instance, were a super-talented programmer who majored in English, a tech entrepreneur who majored in graphic design, and marketing executive who majored in philosophy.
I think the best advice for a student is to major in a subject that they'd enjoy studying for four years. That way they'll have a good time and find it easy to work hard! Note also that "enjoy studying" means the whole process, taking into account which subjects have inspiring professors and interesting fellow students.
