I was rereading this article on college majors and thought it might provide useful information to someone.
At least this article got around to the truth about psychology as a major but I still didn’t find it particularly informative. Most articles denigrate psychology as a major where graduates make less than $30,000/yr without ever mentioning that it is a major that requires grad school and is a good career for those who complete the education path. This article did mention clinical psychologists make $70,000/yr, not $30,000, but it was buried at the bottom. Ditto with premed and other biological sciences.
Other studies have shown that business majors will outperform many engineering majors after 20 years. Starting salaries are only the start of ones analysis.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html indicates that the mid-career median pay for business majors tends to be lower than that for engineering majors (though some engineering majors do worse than some business majors).
However, the top end (90th percentile mid-career pay) is quite good for some business majors (finance, marketing), who do better than most engineering majors (but some other business majors, like management, accounting, MIS do not generally beat engineering majors at the 90th percentile mid-career pay). But the top earning people from even the majors associated with the lowest pay levels do well enough for a financially comfortable living by the mid-career point.
My H swears by his psych degree as being incredibly useful in his various careers as a real estate and mortgage broker and now as an attorney. One of my closest friends parlayed hers into a career as a psychiatrist. Neither received the terminal degree in psych but did receive a terminal degree.
I also wanted to add that forcing yourself into a major or a career that you hate just because it’s more financially lucrative doesn’t seem like a good way to live. My parents tried to force me into computer programming but I chose political science and law school. I feel that I would have been miserable in computers and would probably not have made good money because my heart wouldn’t have been in my work. I feel the same, for me personally, about business, finance, accounting, medicine or anything else that isn’t law and I feel that way about most practice areas as well.
What’s surprising to me is 25% of Bachelor’s holders have earnings near the median of HS graduates. So maybe a quarter of college graduates, who don’t go to graduate or professional school, see little to no ROI.
haven’t read the article at the link above, but also see this link:
https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/
Not that surprising, @roethlisburger. College isn’t the panacea for everything.
Agreed. What’s so tragic about many HS friends who were pressured(mostly by peers in their case) into financially lucrative professions is that they managed to not only completely excel in their pre-professional education, but also excel in those professions despite finding that they hate it and feeling very trapped.
One case which underscores this was an ex-GF who overlapped with me in HS, went into Pharmacy because it was one of the “lucrative/respectable” career paths, excelled in the Pharmacy education program, and excelled as a Pharmacist in a large regional hospital for ~15 years.
She found out about 5 years in her career that she hated it, but feels trapped because of fears the narrow pre-professional focus of her education means she’ll have to start college from scratch and she has excelled to the point of getting high raises to the point her high income serves as “golden handcuffs” to borrow a phrase from several biglaw friends in similar situations.
This article is from 2014. The key of course is the hyperbole about how great it is to be a petroleum engineer. Ummm… not now. Recent grads who are struggling to find a job at an oil company will find this article hilarious.
It also ironically underscores the saying “history repeats itself” as the current issue of ChemEs job search struggles mirrors what my parents and older relatives observed with ChemE majors/graduates in the '70s.
Many ended up driving taxis, waiting tables, working retail, etc. Not too different from many stereotypes of “liberal arts majors” ending up working as baristas after graduation held by some…including some posters here on CC.