So I’m currently a junior in high school and I have an equal passion for journalism and politics. Which of these majors will give me the most success after college? Also, would either of these majors be acceptable in the other career, e.g. I can use my political science degree to get a job in journalism and vice versa.
do a major/minor. I would say major in poli sci as that’s an extremely complex topic, as opposed to how easy it is to write a halfway decent news story/minor in journalism.
take my advice with a grain of salt, but I would imagine you’d be a competitive employee with so much knowledge on political theory, which can be used to write opinion sections or just well informed, well rounded feature stories.
Both journalism and political science are rather weak for jobs, but you will probably be able to get a job with either, though it may not be in your field of study.
Journalism and polisci are pretty easy majors to double-major in, so I would suggest that. It’s what I’m doing, as I have an equal love for both and am planning on going into political journalism.
Majors alone don’t confer success. They can help, but most is up to you. Even if, let’s say, political science has higher median starting salaries and employment rates, you could be really passionate about and gifted in journalism and do well enough that you leapfrog the rest.
With that said, political science is a more established social science major, and it does actually have higher average starting salaries than journalism as a major. Moreover, you don’t need to major in journalism to become a journalist. You could potentially write political news and commentary with a PS major and some internships, working your way up. Most jobs also aren’t tied to any specific major, so you can do a lot of things with either degree. Political science majors do confer some quantitative skills (and you can increase that as much as you want by taking additional classes), and can be pretty useful to do some research/policy associate work at a think tank, NGO, nonprofit, or other organization.
Oh, and I wouldn’t say they are “weak” for employment. Most journalism and political science majors are gainfully employed.
There’s a lot of competition in Journalism from what I see bu there’s no doubt in the success rate on that field
Take them both!
In response to @jjwinkle, I think they are weak for jobs. In my opinion, they are just hard to get into if you try to apply in a really good company or a network.