In the modern world there’s an obsession with figuring out what field of study or job path is the “safest” or “best” from the perspective of guaranteeing a young person a good livelihood for life.
I am old enough to still be amused by the way the 1967 movie The Graduate addressed that question: “Plastics.”
Given that we now live in a world overrun with plastic, perhaps it wasn’t far wrong.
For the past couple of decades or so the answer has been something related to digital tech. That one is so strong that about the only argument against it comes from the tech bros themselves – they claim their so-called AI will make all jobs obsolete. (It won’t.)
But the next big thing isn’t going to be in tech (though some people working in it will use some high end computing). And it’s not going back to plastics and other byproducts of the fossil fuel years.
And I doubt it’s even going back to earlier times when what most people did was grow the food so all could eat, though there are some apocalyptic stories these days that set that up.
No, the next big thing – the one that will give people guaranteed work for their lifetime – is obvious from watching the weather news.