:-B :-B :-B
On Thursday, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce released a new study on the economic value of college majors. Try out the interactive web tool.
https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/
I found the link to the study in a recent article:
"You finally selected a college, don’t start worrying about your major"
Interesting study. Thanks for posting.
I have mixed feelings about majors. The College list has been much easier to compile since my DS’s interests are quite clear. Will he retire from a position doing exactly what his major would seem to lead to? Who knows?!? College students need to have some idea what they want to study to pick a school but having the opportunity to change the major if the first one is not quite right is important as well. I DO NOT think anyone should choose a major purely based upon the salary range of jobs it might lead to. There must be sincere interest, some talent and a desire to actually DO the jobs it might lead to. For example someone that cannot imagine sitting indoors at a desk should not become an accountant just because it pays well but if that person wants to understand accounting as a basis for running their own business, that makes far more sense.
On a related subject, remember this table?
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html
Note that the 90th percentile pay graduates of just about all majors do well in mid-career pay. But the same is not necessarily true for the median and 10th percentile pay graduates.
Note also that some majors appear to have high Gini coefficients while others have low Gini coefficients. Compare art history and music (high Gini majors) with nursing and physician assistant (low Gini majors), for example.
My kids have different majors and interests. One pays appreciably less than the other (unless you hit it big). So what. You have to do what you love in life.
Because of other threads, I was just thinking about a friend who majored in econ in order to placate his father, who was the CFO of a major corporation everyone has heard of. He wanted to be a poet. He had one corporate job, which I think his father more or less got for him, then he quit and worked at a low-level hospital admin job that enabled him to spend most of his time writing poetry.
Pay level must be sufficient for one to live on.
Of course, someone who lives frugally has a lower minimum pay level requirement than someone who lives lavishly. The frugal one has more choices in terms of career paths (and college majors to the extent that they relate to career paths).
I think most of these salary studies are worthless without information about what happened after graduation as far as further education, or training, or eventual career choice. Is the individual actually doing a job directly related to the major or for which the major directly prepared him? For example, it seems quite a few classics majors go to law school, and yes the major may be helpful in preparing them for the LSAT or to be good writers, yet their salary derives from the law degree. Their undergraduate degree could have been English or history or philosophy and there would be no difference in what they make a lawyers.
These studies have a use, but you should always take into account limitations in the data. I wouldn’t want salary info to determine my major, but it may influence it or influence other decisions (how much debt can I realistically incur; if I move out of state, what’s a reason expectation on salary…etc.).
However, for me, I find the executive summary of most interest. I especially found the info on the % of majors that lead to graduate school, and the benefit ($) a graduate degree could offer by major of interest. The “Graduate Advantage” is very substantial and it’s across almost all majors.
If you’re going to the median 4-year college, which is to say a decent directional public school, then this list may give you some guidance.
If you’re going to a CC school, meaning a highly selective private or a state flagship, then the power of the degree will likely trump the power of the specific major.