From CNBC: The top 10 most-regretted college majors — and the degrees graduates wish they had pursued instead
Even with college application season in full swing, many families are questioning whether a four-year degree is still worth it.
Some experts say the value of a bachelor’s degree is fading and more emphasis should be directed toward career training. A growing number of companies, including many in tech, are also dropping degree requirements for many middle-skill and even higher-skill roles.
However, earning a degree is almost always worthwhile, according to “The College Payoff,” a report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Percentage of graduates who would pick a different major if they could:
Journalism 87%
Sociology 72%
Liberal arts/general studies 72%
Communications 64%
Education 61%
Marketing management + research 60%
Medical/clinical assisting 58%
Political science + government 56%
Biology 52%
English language + literature 52%
Perhaps the most important part of the article:
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This is weird. Two majors, bio and med assisting are strong leads to all sorts of good paying jobs. Med Assistants are in demand as are all med pro’s. Both those majors either set up directly for a job or for the next steps.
What is the dynamics of Ziprecruiter? How does that effect their sample?Report
If I have to guess, the type of person who fills out a survey for Ziprecruiter is someone who checks that website daily and is in no hurry.
So, I’m guessing, it’s someone unemployed and frustrated that they are still unemployed.Report
My impression is that you can start work in those fields with a certification or associate’s degree, but access to the top positions may require a master’s degree.Report
Yeah but a BS sets you up for that. Master’s in med fields in gold. A bio bs should be able to find work in labs or hospitals. Seems like some weird artifacts or things we can’t see.
I get why journo sucks but majoring in journo in 2020+ is a suckers game. The rest are generic majors could lead to lots of solid jobs or not depending on the person.Report
Right. They didn’t ask master’s grads, they asked bachelor’s grads, the people who are looking at two more years of schooling to move up. Not the people who put in 2 years for a 2 years’ salary, or 6 years for a 6 years’ salary. The ones who are feeling stuck.Report
That’s the issue I ran into with my BS in Chemistry. I more or less topped out promotion wise, but well-below my ambition (and ability, arguably).Report
Yup, add in that the survey was of job-seekers, and it makes sense that a lot of people will be upset about limited advancement.Report
Stories like this are generally useless because it does not tell you why someone regretted their decision. I’ve known plenty of arts majors who decided that being an artist sucked sometime in their mid to late 20s and fled to something practical like law school, coding academies, business school, etc. I’ve also know plenty of people who did the practical route and then burnt out in their late 20s or early 30s and went back to school for something art-related that they always wanted to study.Report
I’d be curious what the numbers for education majors looked like pre-pandemic.Report
Given that there’s already a national teacher shortage “Education 61%” is a screaming klaxon.Report
I’d be interested too-
From NPR: The culture wars are pushing some teachers to leave the classroom
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/13/1131872280/teacher-shortage-culture-wars-critical-race-theory
Further, in a survey published by the Rand Corp. earlier this year, more than a third of teachers and 60% of principals reported being harassed during the 2021-2022 school year “because of their school’s policies on COVID-19 safety measures or for teaching about race, racism, or bias.”Report
The culture wars are only when bad things happen to your side, I guess. The filtering out of conservatives and the indoctrination are just part of creating a new generation of teachers, but all of a sudden you can’t teach a pre-teen oral sex without someone getting upset, and that’s the culture wars. And are you sure you want to lump covid policies into the culture wars? It seems like you’re conceding that a lot of it was performance rather than science.Report
I’d say it was the armed men invading Michigan’s state capitol over masking requirements and closures that made COVID a culture war issue. What with them being proud members of various right wing militia groups and all.Report
But like, not every day, right? If you had to list every event in the covid timeline as it affected people’s lives, you might drop that one and no one would remember. And just because some on the left and right disagree on something doesn’t make it a culture war issue. I don’t think of global warming as a matter of culture war. A lot of our culture war issues find their way to the courts, but I wouldn’t consider judicial nominations to be part of the culture war. So what makes covid policy part of the culture wars? I assume that NPR wanted to add a stat to the article and this was the most relevant thing they could find, but then why did Chip highlight it? I suspect that the left does this out of reflex. The decision tree is something like: I was criticized, it’s not directly economic, I’m not going to consider whether I’m wrong, therefore it’s culture war.Report
It wasn’t the only armed protest. That aside, it was all about the mask mandates and closures that persist (usually form the political right) as a political issue at the local and state level.
You’d be in the minority of conservatives to say so, in as much as the “solutions” will likely require up ending some if not all of conservatives favorite economic approaches.Report
From the “Trending Job Titles” section of the website:
Video GAME Tester
GAME Tester
Apple Home Advisor
Psychic
Tower Climber
Cannabis Grower
Appointment Setter
Voice Actor
Flight Attendant
Survey Taker
Photo RetoucherReport
2022, I guess we’re supposed to be grateful that cannabis tester wasn’t on the list.Report
Here’s how bad it is:
Our little local free newspaper got rid of their marijuana reviewers.Report
“Journalism 87%”Report
The stat that *CONTINUES* to confound me is that, every year, there are more j-school graduates than jobs in the industry. Not open jobs in the industry, mind… JOBS.
Like, you could fire every single reporter in the country and hire a fresh-faced 2022 journalism grad to replace them and you’d have journalism graduates left over.
That almost feels like a scam.Report
It’s got to be some combination of overconfidence / misunderstanding of the job market, or people choosing the major with no intention of working in the field. I think it’s still true that any degree is better than no degree. Is it one of the easier majors? I don’t see it on the top 10 lists, although a few of the others in your article appear.Report
I know journalism grads from respected second tier mid west universities who do communications work for hospitals and state universities. One of them wrote for small town papers first, the other just went straight to the hospital and never looked back.
Its a small sample size, but it may point to what at least some of those graduates are doing.Report
I think the key questions are really about opportunity cost, debt for the degree, and ongoing perceptions of it. Ten years ago at the height of the ‘law school scam’ stuff the issue wasn’t only lack of jobs as lawyers. It was that plus debt way disproportionate to income opportunities plus the fact that if you show up to an interview for any job other than ‘lawyer’ people will treat it as highly questionable based on their own perceptions of the degree. If people with a journalism degree are still able to get an office email job like, say, a history major might be, and pay for the degree then it’s not a big deal.Report
Hey, I came up at the beginning of the weakening of the scarcity premium.
“Just get the degree! Just get the piece of paper!” was something that adults told me.
When I got my degree, somewhere around 22% or 23% of all adults had a Bachelor’s degree.
Now that number is 36%. The scarcity premium is drying up at the same time that the price of college is skyrocketing.
The resulting debt for college made sense for useless degrees when I went to school because the debt wasn’t *THAT* much and the degree sent a strong (though weakening) signal to employers.
If the fundamentals were identical to the fundamentals in the mid-90’s, it’d make sense to make the same arguments about the benefit of just getting the piece of paper as were made then.
But the fundamentals have changed to the point where it’s worth questioning whether a personal fulfillment degree is worth a mortgage payment for the next 30 years.Report
Totally agree.Report
Did anyone ask them what they would have taken instead?Report
My wife states if she could do it all over again, she would choose computer science/software engineering. Her major was not even that unpractical and she had the brass ring career path. Me? I would choose to do theatre again. Maybe I would add a history or art history double major.
This is just goes to the trillion dollar question: what is the point and purpose of education? Is it to produce practical skills that can lead to economic security or advancement or is it to produce a fuller and more rounded person with nuance and complexity. I would like to think it can be both but a lot of people seem to have doubts and disinterest in the more rounded person theory of education.
Still the whole FTX debacle and scandal should teach humanity that there is a difference between can do something and should do something. It won’t though.Report
Wait, wife?Report
Mazel tov!Report
Percentage of graduates who would choose the same major again
Computer + information sciences 72%
Criminology 72%
Engineering 71%
Nursing 69%
Health 67%
Business administration + management 66%
Finance 66%
Psychology 65%
Construction trades 65%
Human resources management 58%
I sent my 3rd girl that link a few days ago.Report
Honestly, I kinda of regret my CS degree. It’s served me quite well, of course. But if I could do it again, knowing how many people succeed in software without CS degrees, I probably would have gone with math.Report
I have a math degree, which at the time was a fine path into CS.. Nowadays, when I see the level of CS expertise even our interns (i.e. college sophomores and juniors) have, I see the CS degree as much more valuable.Report