The limitation here is that I don’t believe the data captures secondary majors. So, sometimes there are departments that actually are excellent, but don’t graduate a lot of primary majors that show up in the NCES data. For example, foreign languages were top-notch at my daughter’s school, and the classes were popular, and many students minored or did a dual major in their foreign language of choice; but the primary-major data wouldn’t tell you that.
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Not exactly - some jobs have a specific set of jobs built-in : engineering-> engineer, education → teaching, Packaging-> Packaging… I assume that’s Construction Management. I’m not sure what that entails - a mix of engineering and supply chain management?
I assume that for people who know what Construction Management is, it’s obvious what job it “means”. I just don’t know and would like to understand.
Most majors don’t fit into that category though.
A math major is unlikely to become a mathematician, a history major is unlikely to become a historian. They learn knowledge&skills they apply to professional tasks and internship, jobs, etc. So, the jobs question is broader and depends on more factors.
And then there are majors designed to sound like they offer a direct professional path when in reality they’re not really “professional”, like paralegal studies (which you don’t need to be a paralegal, an endangered profession), etc.
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Exactly.
Most psych majors don’t become psychologists, most econ majors don’t become economists.
And people enter the construction management field through a variety of majors- structural engineering, architectural studies, geology, urban planning and design. Other than nursing and a few others (it is VERY hard to pass the boards without having majored in nursing!) there aren’t that many fields that have a “do this or kiss the career goodbye” major! Some of the highly specialized majors are just a way for a college to rebrand an under-enrolled major or to meet a sudden surge in parent/student interest (all the “neuroscience” majors. There are plenty of neuroscientists who never majored in neuroscience!). And others are a way to knit together a couple of disciplines which used to be separate by are now converging (Security Studies; Cyber; Sustainability). Many of the leaders in the sustainability function/senior types of roles did NOT major in sustainability- it didn’t exist when they were in college. They majored in chemistry or one of the engineering disciplines or urban planning or another adjacent type field depending on their particular interests.
One reason why historical “ROI” measures often fall flat as being useful or predictive!
Both still have related jobs for which they have an advantage over the other. For example, a math graduate is more likely to become a high school math teacher, and a history graduate is more likely to become a high school history teacher (both would likely need a teaching credential as well).
There are also those which aim for a specific professional path, but are not likely to give much advantage in hiring over other more general majors, and may be more limiting if that specific professional path does not work out. Examples would include sports management and computer game design.
Schools that are heavily weighted in the sciences are far more common than schools that are heavily weighted toward the humanities (that said, even MIT has a highly respected history department, and its Ph.D. program in the History of Science is top-notch). People forget that “Liberal Arts” is short for “Liberal Arts and Sciences.” It’s not equivalent to “humanities.” I don’t think a school (except perhaps for divinity schools) could survive without offering a full range of humanities, arts, social sciences, and STEM majors, and even at LACs, the STEM majors (or STEM-adjacent, like Econ with heavy quant requirements) are often the most popular.
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No, we did not look for data on ROI when we created the college list because the data, as reported, always contain too much noise to apply to our nuanced situation.
However, we did consider value when picking a college. Both of my kids are majoring in fields (the arts) where pay is generally low. So we looked for schools that could provide a solid education while not costing too much. Not going into debt is important for artists. It might have been different if our kids were aiming for highly paid careers such as finance.
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Among the liberal arts STEM majors, biology is usually quite popular, while chemistry, physics, and math are often quite small.
In terms of example colleges, Sarah Lawrence College has rather limited offerings in chemistry, computer science, economics, math, and physics, compared to its more extensive offerings in history, literature, psychology, and various arts. See the course catalog at https://www.sarahlawrence.edu/undergraduate/2024-2025-catalogue.pdf .
That’s a good point. There are also some categorization issues where it is not always easy to know how an available major got coded.
For the second majors issue, though, NCES apparently does have that data. This site collected both for a relatively recent cohort:
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jonboeckenstedt/viz/BachelorsDegreesAwardedin2022/Dashboard1
Minors, though, I don’t know how to address. So definitely take all this with appropriate caution.
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Don’t necessarily disagree with any of that. I was just pointing out that there are no LACs that I’ve ever heard of that only offer humanities courses. Just my routine public service announcement on behalf of the oft-misunderstood creature of education that is the liberal arts college.
Yes, sorry, that wasn’t really a reply to your post in retrospect.
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I spoke too quickly and didn’t mean it that way in making the comparison. I know SLACs don’t have only humanities degrees, and I know “tech” schools don’t only have STEM degrees. That wasn’t really my point. But good to clarify nonetheless. (FWIW, I went to a Liberal Arts College back in the day, and have been completely flummoxed by my STEM / Polytechnic school older kid, and Big State U of my younger kid that I constantly feel like I’m learning a new vocabulary so it’s moderately embarrassing to sound so… wrong re: the type of school I truly love and value.)
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Construction Management - at the schools my son applied to it was called “Construction Science and Management” (Clemson and UTK) and “Building Construction” (Virginia Tech). It is NOT the engineering major (often called construction engineering) but is a BS degree. It’s part CivE and part business. There’s a lot that you see the civil engineers doing in terms of some of the math and physics, soil science, steel structures, surveying and basics of building. Then there’s the stuff about how to run a business - accounting, HR basics, contract law, procurement basics, business ethics. Then there’s usually a pretty sizable requirement for practical hours. It’s not as mathy as engineering, is a little more project management focused, and seems to be a little more out in the field work.
At the end he was seriously only considering VT and Clemson and both had the data to show that the grads from their programs had 100% employment before graduation. I gather it’s a greying industry with most of the more professional staff retiring or eligible and looking for the next generation. The employment rate isn’t the sole reason that he’s interested, it’s a good fit for his interest and skills. It’s also something I had never heard of before him.
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Many colleges offer limited majors, but they aren’t among the colleges that get regularly discussed on these forums.
For example, the table in the first post of this thread lists CSU Maritime Academy as the highest ROI public college in CA (Caltech is highest among privates). CSU Maritine offers 7 majors – Business, Facilities Engineering, International Strategy, Oceanography, Marine Engineering, Marine Transportation, and Mechancal Engineering. The limited majors and unique major distribution relates to why ROI is higher than other CSUs.
The linked report shows the college with highest ROI over full career is St. Louis Pharmacy. St. Louis pharmacy offers 11 majors all of which are health/medicine related. However, the vast majority of students major in pharmacuedical sciences. Again the limited majors and unique major distribution relates to why ROI is higher than other colleges.
The college with the lowest full career ROI is Manhattan School of Music. They only offer music related majors, which realtes to why ROI is lower than other colleges.
In some years, Harvey Mudd is listed as the highest average salary college on Payscale. Harvey Mudd’s website only lists 6 primary majors and 7 joint majors, all of which STEM related. The majority of students at Harvey Mudd major in CS (as either primary or joint), which relates to why average salary is so high.
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OK, so I should have added music schools along with divinity schools in the category of schools with humanities-only offerings.
But the other schools you’ve listed here prove my point, which was that schools that dramatically limit the scope of their offerings tend to be STEM-focused, not humanities-focused. My point was that there aren’t really any LACs that just offer non-STEM majors.
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Liberal arts includes STEM majors. For example, biology, chemistry, and physics are all classic liberal arts majors that exist in any standard definition of “liberal arts” and are typically offered at LACs. Math and CS are also sometimes considered liberal arts as well, which can depend on how the major is structured.
If you mean a non-specialty college that only offers non-STEM majors, I agree that there aren’t many which I expect largely relates to tradition (LACs traditionally offer liberal arts majors, which includes some STEM majors), lack of demand, and challenging to sustain financially. However, there are some exceptions beyond the specialty schools that have been previously listed. For example, Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts only offers one major – Liberal Arts.
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OK, I think you need to read my original statement on this point (not quoted excerpts), which defines the liberal arts in exactly this way.
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The post I quoted said, “there aren’t really any LACs that just offer non-STEM majors.” If you believe liberal arts includes a portion of STEM (science, and sometimes math + CS), why do you find it surprising that there aren’t many liberal arts colleges that just offer non-STEM?
At the highly selective top USNWR ranked private colleges that are regularly discussed here, students tend to flock to the majors and career paths associated with higher earnings – both at LACs and non-LACs. Examples include CS, econ, bio/neuro with plans for medical school, etc. These are often the 3 most popular majors. These types of high expected earnings majors are overrpresented at both groups of colleges, while humanities tend to have relatively low enrollment that is declining over time.
Less selective colleges often show a different pattern that is not as focused on majors associated with higher earnings, but often shows a greater representation of pre-professional majors or majors with a career path expectation that is more obvious to students (education → teaching), (nursing → nurse), or (accounting → accountant); rather than (history → ???). This description of more clearly defined career path expectations also aligns with the previously discussed music and divinity colleges, of which there are many.
However, a more general english/history/philosophy/… type humanities-only college doesn’t align well with either pattern.
I don’t find this surprising at all (I’m not really sure how you read it that way). I was responding to another point, in another part of the thread.
I’m not sure why you feel the need to correct me by reiterating points that I’ve already made, but I don’t think this exchange is adding to this thread, and we can move on now.
This discussion made me curious about the Carnegie classifications for major distribution. The totals below show Carnegie “special focus” totals, which indicates that most awarded degrees are in the listed single grouping below, rather than having awarded degrees from a more typical balance of majors.
Nursing / Health – 437
Theological Studies – 294 (Baptist Bible, Yeshiva… )
Arts & Sciences – 221 (Bard, Barnard, Bates)
Business – 120 (Babson, Bentley, Devry)
Arts / Music / Design – 89 (Curtis, Juliard)
Technology / Engineering – 42 (MIT, Caltech, Mudd)
The lowest and highest 4-year, bachelor’s ROI colleges linked in original post are well correlated with the special focus colleges above. The highest ROI colleges below are all in the special focus medical, tech, and business categories.
- St. Louis Pharmacy
- Albany Pharmacy
- Massachusets Pharmacy
- Caltech
- MIT
- Drew Medicine
- Harvey Mudd
- Bentley
- Babson
The lowest ROI colleges are well correlated with music/art and religious special focus groupings, but also include colleges with unique groups of students, such as Beacon . I am excluding colleges in Puerto Rico / Guam, which compose vast majority of bottom 10.
- Manhattan Music
- Beacon College (“exclusively for students with learning disabilities”)
- Beth Rivkah
- Hussian College LA (only bachelors in fine arts degree offered, now closed)
- United Talamudical Seminary
I think the OP question was asking what members of the CC community are doing. Obviously, we would not allow the possibility of transfers, major changes, and uncertainty change our path. Some other people might. You learn a lot spending time in career services.