This sort of thing is one of the many reasons why I wish the internet had been around when I was a teen.
If you don’t want to go to the site, I’ll spoiler the list:
English, sociology, drama, liberal arts, studio arts, graphic design (who knew?), philosophy/religion, film/photography, fine arts, anthropology.
Journalism isn’t on the list? I’m sure I heard on NPR recently, that the US produced more journalism every year than there are journalists.
When I was in college 30+ years ago, lists like these were kept in the career counseling office. So, available, but not readily so.
BTW, my son has a BFA degree and now he’s a starving artist in NYC.
There are exactly two valid reasons to major in philosophy:
As a counterpoint, Kiplinger also listed the 10 Best College Majors for a Lucrative Career
1. Pharmacy and Pharmacology
2. Nursing
3. Transportation Sciences and Technology
4. Treatment Therapy Professions
5. Chemical Engineering
6. Electrical Engineering
7. Medical Technologies
8. Construction Services
9. Management Information Systems
10. Medical Assisting ServicesIt should come as no surprise the half of them are in health care.
At my university, one could say we sort of put “graphic design majors,” under the umbrella of journalism. The department has a concentration in editing and graphic design; most of the students seem to say they’re graphic design majors instead of journalism majors.
I’m a little surprised at anthropology, but when I pause and think, it does make sense in a way.
I wonder if they accounted for gender differences. The “bad” majors are mostly areas that attract a lot of women, and women tend to be the ones who drop out of the work world to take care of children, and to bear the brunt of parenting responsibilities when both parents work. And just plain get discriminated against in pay and promotion.
That’s not to say I don’t believe the article overall. It makes sense that getting training in *thinking *about stuff in a general way is less likely to plug into jobs where they want you to *do *stuff in a specific way.
Dr. Hibbert: Your playing days are over, my friend. But, you can always fall back on your degree in… [reads chart] communications? Oh, dear Lord!
Anton Lubchenko: I know! Is phony major… Lubchenko learn nothing. Nothing!
O.K., let’s note something. The tenth worse major, English, has an unemployment rate of 6.7% and a median salary of $48,000. The tenth best major, has an unemployment rate of 2.9% and a median salary of $51,000. You know, those really aren’t that far apart. This sort of news story (with ten best and worst lists) is so common it’s gotten boring to me. Take a list of one hundred of something. (In this case, the article says that they started with a list of the one hundred most common college majors in the U.S.) They could just give a long list with the unemployment rates and the median salaries of all one hundred of those majors. Readers who don’t want to think hard about a news story’s meaning wouldn’t bother to read it. And besides, what would it show? Given one hundred of anything and some statistic about all those one hundred things, obviously you can rank them from top to bottom. The differences between adjacent items in that statistic might actually be small. So instead give just the top and bottom ten, with pictures and stories implying that there are some majors so vastly better than others that you’ll starve if you major in the lowest one and you’ll be rolling in dough if you major in the highest one.
So let’s be honest now. If you graduate from college you’ll have a higher average income than if you don’t, no matter what you major in. Graduates in some majors will, on average, earn distinctly more than graduates in other majors and are distinctly more likely to be employed. Not hugely, overwhelmingly, grotesquely more, but distinctly more. If money is what’s important to you, go for the major with a low unemployment rate and a high average income. Be aware, though, that some graduates with that major don’t make big incomes and some are unemployed. If you’re determined to major in a field with distinctly lower prospects, be honest with yourself. Know that you’re probably going to make a fair amount less money and there’s a good chance that you’ll be unemployed. Honesty about job prospects is good. Telling people thinking about what they’ll major in in college that some majors will cause you to roll in dough and some will cause you to starve to death is just not honest.
Yet funnily enough, when you sort this chart by mid-career salary, philosophy majors are in the upper 1/3, beating out a lot of more practical-sounding fields like IT, nursing, and business management. (And no, these are not philosophy grads who went to law school; the information comes from a survey of people with a bachelor’s degree and nothing higher.)
Aren’t we being a wee bit melodramatic, Wendell?
I majored in philosophy in order to finance my major in mathematics. The department had plenty of money for academic scholarships and grants and few people capable of earning them. I ended up turning a small profit getting both degrees.
No, it’s that article that’s being a wee bit melodramatic.
The thing with liberal arts majors is that its hard to get a job in your field and make a lot of money at it. So many of them end up in different fields. If you end up as a barista, you aren’t going to make a lot of money. But there are a hell of a lot of liberal arts graduates (including English majors and Theatre majors and Religion majors) who are Project Managers and Business Analysts and other sort of open ended non-specific jobs - some fairly lucrative careers.
There is a wider variation mid career if you major in a liberal arts field than if you major in Nursing.
I was a six figure a year Project Manager with a Film Studies degree.
damn, good for you!
Well, I majored in Anthropology and one of my minors is in Sociology, and I’m making a more than adequate amount teaching high school, which is what I wanted to do with my life.
The list is meaningless for anybody who plans.
Because, of course, absolutely everything is about maximizing your earning potential so you can be a good little economic engine.
The other problem with using lists like this as a guide to individual behavior is that they say absolutely nothing about whether a field of study is appropriate for any given student. Someone who barely made it through algebra cannot successfully major in engineering, no matter how lucrative that field may be in the abstract. The reason why it’s lucrative in the first place is that people with the appropriate background and aptitude are in very short supply.
And then you have people like me, who might be intellectually capable of making it through an engineering program (with a lot of hard work), but who would never ever be one of the standout students in that program, and would certainly not earn any merit-based scholarships or fellowships. OTOH, I would be (and was) the sort of student who stands out as one of the best in the class in any humanities field. If you’re really freaking good at language, and just OK at math, I’m not convinced that it makes sense to be a mediocre engineering major rather than a stellar English major. Grades matter. Rec letters matter. Scholarship money matters.
And only the stats majors realize it 
People with four year college degrees don’t normally wind up working in fast food long term unless they have bigger problems than just their choice of major. I was a Philosophy major and am now a university librarian, which is admittedly not that glamorous, but I do make a decent middle class salary and don’t have to wear a hairnet. Several of my former classmates did go on to law school, but none work in food service.
Heck, according to that chart even the starting salary for Philosophy majors is near the middle of the pack, and better than that for things like Health Care Administration, Education, and Biology.