It still pays to earn a college degree. That is, if you get the right one. Georgetown University published a report Wednesday that looked into this dilemma.

"The labor market demands more specialization. So, the game has changed," says Anthony Carnevale, the report's co-author and director of Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce.

Carnevale says students probably aren't choosing the right degrees because they haven't been given the right guidance.

Chasing The Elusive American Dream

He says that given slow hiring in the current economy, some industries that sound promising aren't — like biomedical engineering. That's what Sandra Mantilla majored in at Florida International University.

Mantilla's parents came from Colombia with the American dream in mind: Go to college, get a degree and a good job. Engineering seemed to be solid career choice. She intended to work after her undergraduate degree for a few years and then return to school for a master's or doctoral degree.

She's had internships at NASA, the National Institutes of Health and at two universities. But she's been looking for a job since November. Despite job fairs and what seemed to be a few good interviews, she hasn't found work. The plan has changed, and now Mantilla intends to go straight back to school.

She says she doesn't think she had enough information to set realistic expectations when she first went to college.

"It was a little bit hard for me, when I was in high school, to get the guidance because I was a first-generation college student, so I didn't really have all the information," she says. "On top of that, there was the language barrier — I was still learning English."

If she could go back, she says she would have done more research and maybe even held off on going to college to save up money. Her former high school classmates who don't have four-year degrees have moved up, working as medical assistants or retail managers.

"It's sad to see that a lot of people who I went to high school with, who didn't go to college, are doing much better than I am," Mantilla says.

She's not optimistic, she says, but her parents and fiance are.

"Whenever I get extremely negative, they are the ones keeping me going," she says. "And I just try not to stay still and not doing anything. I keep looking every morning, I sign up for job announcements, I get emails and I keep applying and I'm hoping that one day something will come my way."

Carnevale says Mantilla's lack of guidance is not uncommon.

"The United States really has no counseling apparatus," he says. "We have [300] to 400 students for every counselor in high school."

Meanwhile, Carnevale says, college guidance offices are generally geared toward fulfilling curriculum requirements rather than shaping long-term career goals and expectations.

'If I Had A Time Machine'

Timothy Ryan also could have used some extra advice. He has a bachelor's degree in communications from Rowan University in New Jersey.