Does college major influence the success of the American Dream? A new, 2012 research report entitled “Hard Times, College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal" from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce finds certain college majors give job seekers with college degrees a statistically recognizable advantage in gaining employment. A major conclusion of the new report is “Not all college degrees are created equal,” and the worth of a college degree on today’s job market can depend on your major.
The data-based report by authors Anthony P. Carnevale, Ban Cheah, and Jeff Strohl from The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, an independent, nonprofit research and policy institute that studies the link between individual goals, education and training curricula, and career pathways, was prepared with support from the Lumina Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The study confirms earlier Georgetown Center work that showed job seekers with a college degree (unemployment rate of 8.9%) definitely do better than those with only a high school diploma or high school dropouts (the latter with respective, catastrophic unemployment rates of 22.9% and 31.5%).
What’s the college major with the highest rate of unemployment?
While a college degree holds value over a high school diploma, a major conclusion of the newly released report is that the choice of college major for a degree was a statistically relevant factor in recent hard times, a visible factor in determining unemployment risk. The highest rate of unemployment, the study found, is among Architecture graduates (13.9 percent) due to the collapse of the construction and home-building industries in the recession.
And, experience doesn’t always help in that troubled major. Unemployment rates for recent college graduates who majored in Architecture start high at 13.9 percent and due to architecture’s strong alignment with the collapse in construction and housing, unemployment for this major remains high even for experienced college graduates at 9.2 percent.
In general, unemployment is usually higher for non-technical majors, such as the Arts (11.1 percent) or Social Sciences (8.9 percent).
Within technology degrees, what are the differences in unemployment?
Even the type of technology major matters. People who make technology are better off than people who use technology.
For recent graduates in Math and Computing, unemployment is low for specialists who can write software and invent new applications (6%), but unemployment still runs comparatively high (11.2 percent) for those who use software to manipulate, mine, and disseminate information.
What majors yield low unemployment rates?
Unemployment rates are relatively low (5.4 percent) for recent graduates in Engineering, the Sciences, Education, or Healthcare related majors because they are tied to stable or growing industry sectors and occupations. Psychology and Social Work graduates also have relatively low rates (7.3 percent), because almost half of them work in the Healthcare or Education sectors.
At the same time, majors that are closely aligned with occupations and industries in low demand can misfire. For example, unemployment rates for recent college graduates who majored in Architecture start high at 13.9 percent and due to its strong alignment with the collapse in construction and housing, unemployment remains high even for experienced college graduates at 9.2 percent.
What are the median rates of earnings?
Even employed, what a college graduate makes is influenced by a degree’s major. Median earnings among recent college graduates vary from $55,000 among Engineering majors to $30,000 in the Arts, as well as Psychology and Social Work.
Can a graduate degree help?
The overall unemployment rate for people with graduate degrees is just 3 percent. With the exception of Arts and Education, where pay traditionally has been low, workers with graduate degrees average between $60,000 and $100,000 per year, compared to a range of $48,000 and $62,000 for workers with Bachelor’s Degrees.
Not all graduate degrees outperform all Bachelor Degrees on employment.For example, experienced college graduates in a healthcare field have lower unemployment rates than people with graduate degrees in every other field except the life and physical sciences.
Data-based food for thought on employment prospects by major
The report is a practical reflection resource as its tables clearly present factors such as unemployment rate of recent grads, unemployment rate of experienced degree holders, graduate degree holders, and median salary in reference to specific majors. Career choices and college majors matter, especially in difficult economic times. Weighing the factors of personal passions, academic inclinations, employment prospects, family responsibilities, and college costs is a complex process, and its decisions can be well-facilitated by real world data.
The report, “Hard Times, College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal”and its data analysis are available online, without registration or fee, in PDF format at the website of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.
Find the take in this article to be helpful? The writer is a former US National Technology and Learning Teacher of the Year, a former US Web-based Education Commissioner during the Clinton administration, and former Vice President of Global Knowledge Exchange, now writing on National Education issues. To keep current on similar articles, view the suggested links below and click the free, “subscribe to get instant updates” link at the top of this article to get a conveniently customized news delivery.
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