PT144 · S2 · Q20 Professor: The number of new

This answer doesn't talk about anything that's changed in the past ten years, so it can't possibly help us explain something that's changed in the past ten years. Also, this is talking about students who don't enter as a chemistry major, because they lack the requisite academic background. We, meanwhile, are trying to explain why people who are entering as chemistry majors aren't making it out with chemistry degrees.

This just tells us that there is also a reduction in the number of people earning degrees in other fields of science too. But why?

This answer doesn't talk about anything that's changed in the past ten years, so it can't possibly help us explain something that's changed in the past ten years. Students were very unsure of their choice 10 years ago, too. Unless students have become more unsure about their first major, over the past 10 years, we can't use this to explain a difference.

This comparison is saying that chemistry jobs look to be just as juicy, or less, than are jobs you could get with other science degrees. If we took "job prospects are no better" to mean "job prospects for people chemistry degrees are worse", we would already be adding something to the answer that isn't there. But, even forgiving that, we would start telling ourselves this story: Oh, that's why there are fewer chemistry degrees -- because job prospects for chemistry degrees are worse than for other degrees, so I guess they switched majors to those more lucrative fields. This would still be a really weak storyline, because one of the background constraints was that job prospects for chemistry degrees are better than ever.