Biology and chemistry are not normally considered health care or health profession majors, even though many biology majors were initially pre-med. The linked Coursera page lists “Biological and biomedical sciences” as a separate category.
Very few of those entering college with pre-med intentions get into MD/DO school (and the incomes earned by MD/DO graduates often go to paying off a heavy debt burden from MD/DO school).
You may be missing the point. My point was that there are many categories of majors outside what was stated as being “over half” of graduates, and was simply giving examples of majors in different categories that combined comprise, IIRC, the majority of majors, that aren’t necessarily going to lead to high paying jobs right out of college or even within the first few years those outcome reports often cite.
I am not impressed with the Coursera list. It’s calling things like “heath” and “social sciences” majors and using totals for the 2021 calendar year. In fairness, this is what is available. NCES doesn’t providing anything more recent than 2021 and only includes broad major groupings in their easier to access pages. This inspired to look at the raw numbers in the database, which NCES has not yet provided in a table format. Most popular completed majors for bachelor’s degrees in 2024 at 4-year non-profit colleges in USA are below this post. For dual majors, percentages are defined based on “first major.”
I get 55-60% of completed degrees are vocationally oriented – the majority. By “vocationally oriented” I am including business related, health related, engineering/CS related, education related, law enforcement, etc. I am not including liberal arts fields like psychology, biology, political science, etc.
I agree that vocationally oriented is not the same as high starting salary. For example, I mentioned education as a vocationally oriented major. Majoring in early childhood education is no doubt vocationally oriented, but it is not associated with a high starting salary. There are countless other examples. Along the same lines, there are a wide variety of different career paths one can follow with a particular major, contributing to a wide variety of possible expected early career earnings for students pursuing that major.
I believe the college career outcome reports can be quite useful for both students majoring in vocational fields and liberal arts fields, as well as for students undecided about what major they wish to pursue. This is a case where more information is better than less, even if the information is not perfect. However, one needs to understand what the reports indicate and what limitations are present when choosing how to use interpret and use the information.
Most Popular Majors in 2024
1 . Business Administration – 7% (18% for all business categories)
2. Psychology Related – 7%
3. Biology Related – 7%
4. Computer Science Related – 6%
5. Nursing – 6% (11% for all health categories)
This was the point of the entire thread! Understanding the limitations is key. And as also was pointed out in the very first post of this thread, schools should help students with workforce preparation. As an aside, categorizing anything as “vocationally oriented” is a huge swath, given that many students are thinking about careers for themselves. Not everybody majors in philosophy, or ancient Greek civilizations. Some students do go to college just to learn for the sake of learning. And some may consider college akin to a glorified trade school. Most probably do a combination of the 2 and are somewhere in the middle. Given that many schools have distribution requirements or core requirements, students get to test many different fields and areas of study while also exploring and pursuing personal goals.
“In fairness, this is what is available. NCES doesn’t providing anything more recent than 2021”.
@Data10 agree that I couldn’t find anything more recent. But at least we found some tables and didn’t just pull numbers out of nowhere.