<p>i'm all over the place in choosing a mjor and really want to learn, but i'm afraid it is too romantic of an idea to not have an end goal in mind.</p>
<p>I am most likely attending a Jesuit school or a Catholic school with a broad core curriculum, but I cannot decide if I want to do business or a liberal arts major.</p>
<p>The honest answer to almost any question like this is, “it depends”.</p>
<p>But generally speaking, the long-term earnings potential seems to be greater for liberal arts & science majors than for marketing, finance, and accounting majors. In part this is because, with a few exceptions, the very most selective schools don’t even offer business majors. For this reason alone, the smartest most ambitious students disproportionately are arts & science majors.</p>
<p>If you believe the payscale.com data ([Best</a> Undergrad College Degrees By Salary](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp]Best”>Common Jobs for Majors - College Salary Report)), economics majors earn about 9% more than accounting majors in entry positions, and about 26% more by mid-career. Payscale gathers self-reported salary data from alumni who have only undergraduate degrees.</p>
<p>If you plan to go to graduate/professional school anyway, and if you’d sincerely enjoy liberal arts & science courses, then major in whatever you like. If you plan to look for work in a local market straight out of college, then at least in the short run, you might be better off with a business degree.</p>
<p>colleges offer 2 kinds of degrees: vocational ones like accounting or engineering, and the liberal arts like history or biology. If you pursue one of the 2nd kind for the love of the learning, then in college you’ll also need to identify future career paths and take steps to become a strong candidate when you graduate. Internships are one of the best ways to do this. Liberal Arts majors can enter just about any job field if they take the steps while in college to prepare.</p>
<p>Your college career center may give you help in identifying career(s) that you would like and understanding what it takes to become an attractive hire; unfortunately some are just waystations with little more than books and online access to job listings. So take this on your own shoulders; read the book “What Color is Your Parachute” to learn the basics of researching careers, also I strongly recommend “Major in Success” since its about college students who teamed their activities in college with what they loved doing to put together a career.</p>
<p>BTW the previous poster hit it on the head when he said “it depends”. There is no choice that is going to be best for all people under all circumstances. Some people like the security of having a readily marketable major, liberal arts grads from more prestigious schools have an easier time finding a job (although internships are a great equalizer here), and so on.</p>