For many, when they get to the major declaration box on the college application, they know exactly what they want to put down. For others, it can feel like not knowing where to even start your 10-page essay due in two days.
I get asked by many students about their major declaration and know it can cause stress. First, don’t worry if you don’t know your calling – most don’t and many that think they do end up switching course later, with a third of students change majors during college. But it also doesn’t mean totally ignore it and hope it comes to you later. Most advice swings between “Do what you love” and “The top 10 careers for the next 20 years” which both are over-simplified and don’t tell students what they can do to better understand not only the options but what is best for them.
Popularity of majors
The National Center for Education Studies (NCES) collects great data each year, including how many students are in each major which is shown below.
By far, business and the various individual majors within business like marketing, finance, administration, and accounting remain the most popular major. Of the approximate 2 million bachelors degrees awarded each year, almost 20% of total graduates were business majors. While being the most popular major, growth has been flat at under 1% per year.
The next most popular, and one of the fastest growing at over 6% per year, are health professions which includes nursing, pharmacy, medical technicians, and nutrition sciences. Add in the biological sciences which are often a pathway for pre-medical students and just above 19% of bachelors degrees are going to future health professionals. With an aging population, retiring health professionals, and difficulty in outsourcing hands-on health jobs, it remains a highly sought after profession.
Social sciences which includes degrees in history, political science, sociology, and public policy is the next most common major at 8% of degrees each year but has been shrinking slowly over time. Psychology is similar at 6% of graduates and slightly increasing.
Computer Science and IT degrees are still a small percentage of overall degrees, just under 5% of graduates, but is the fastest growing major, growing 8.5% per year as it is one of the fastest growing areas of employment.
Career prospects by major
Following are the most recent statistics for each of the primary major areas, including graduate unemployment rates, underemployment rates, and median early career salary for new graduates.
| Major | Unemployment Rate | Underemployment Rate | Median Early Career Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education | 2.10% | 20.70% | $40,100 |
| Health professions | 4.10% | 36.00% | $49,000 |
| Engineering | 4.50% | 21.80% | $67,200 |
| Business | 4.60% | 38.80% | $54,500 |
| Sciences | 4.60% | 40.80% | $46,636 |
| Psychology | 4.70% | 47.60% | $37,400 |
| Overall average all degrees | 5.10% | 39.80% | $50,000 |
| Computer science and IT | 5.20% | 27.50% | $62,250 |
| Liberal Arts | 6.20% | 50.50% | $42,121 |
| Social Sciences | 6.50% | 47.80% | $43,700 |
| Communications | 6.90% | 50.70% | $44,000 |
Many people will look at only expected salary and placement rates, but one area that is commonly overlooked is the underemployment rate, which is defined as anybody working in a job that does not require a college degree – this could mean retail, restaurants, and Uber as examples. This is important because these underemployed graduates don’t show up in unemployment rates – they have a job, but it isn’t the job they went to school for.
Additionally, there can be great differences among specific areas of study within a major. Below shows unemployment (x-axis) and underemployment (y-axis) stats for each of the above major areas with the sub-specialties. Take Business as an example. Overall, business majors have a really low unemployment rate (4.6%) and an average underemployment rate (38.8%). But the area of specialty matters – marketing, business management, and general business degrees have much higher unemployment and underemployment rates. More specialized business skillsets including accounting, finance, and an emerging and in-demand major of business analytics have better job prospects and higher average salaries. And this makes sense – with so many business majors, an ability to fill a specialized need and to have skills in analytics is important. And for roles like marketing, while a very important group for companies, are typically small with limited openings, totaling a handful of people in a group.
You can swipe through the images to see how each major stacks up.
What this means for you
You should not make a decision on a career solely on hiring prospects or projected salaries – you need to find something that matches both your passion and skills. However, it is important to understand future career prospects. Below are four tips to help narrow in on the right field of study:
Understand your passions and interests
Ideally what you end up doing is what you love. So start there. But it’s only a start. Not every class, even in your area of passion, will be enjoyable and fun but you should find yourself being interested in the subject, being curious, with learning seeming easier.
Understand your strengths
Are you a math person or want to tell the teacher to go find “x” themself? Do you like sciences or do you get squeamish when the dissection projects come up? Again, this is a start – understanding what you are best at helps but also know that many skills can be developed. Don’t like talking in front of people? Lots of people have developed that skill. You like math but just don’t get calculus? Maybe focus on something in accounting or finance.
Get exposure to different areas
The fact is, most kids have a vague idea at best on what their parents or relatives do in their jobs. Counselors can never know what every career is really like, especially with how quickly many careers are changing. A student I know very well didn’t know what she wanted to do, liked math, and hated the idea of coding. Her senior year we tried out AP Statistics and AP Computer Science. After an initial bout feeling overwhelmed in Computer Science and wanting to drop it, she made it through. Fast forward, she just graduated from a top university with a degree in Data Science and off to start her career at a great company.
Too many students are so focused on building their resume and getting into their dream school that they miss opportunities. Yes, you need to build your high school resume, but take an opportunity to experiment and see what you like and don’t like. Talk to people you know about what their job really is like – people will always take the time out to help you there. Few people have a straight, linear path to what their career ends up being and the more you intentionally learn what may be a fit for you, the better.
Think creatively on your career
There are places for different skills all over and not limited to the “obvious” career path for a major. If you love psychology but may not want to be a clinical psychologist or worry about the expected salaries, realize that the skills you build there apply in so many places – trainers, human resources, research, and even technical careers like user experience (UX) design and search engine optimization (SEO). If you like math and technology but would be bored to death coding all day, go get your technology skills but look into a career like product management where you define “what” a product should do instead of building it. Or even sales for a tech company, which increasingly demands deep understanding of technology. And so on, you get the idea. The opportunities are wider than what you initially think they are.
Sources:
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York – The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
- National Center for Education Studies (NCES) – Undergraduate Degree Fields
