Unfortunate truth about society #2,901: Possibly the most important decision about your life’s future income is made when you’re 18 years old.
The idea of trusting someone whose current #1 priority in life is scoring cheap booze (followed closely by impressing that cute guy/girl) with the daunting decision of their life’s income source, is concerning.
Throw some non-dischargeable debt into the mix, and now we’ve really got the stuff nightmares are made of.
If only there was some sort of list which ranked all the college majors by how much they paid…
Oh wait, Glassdoor.com has done just that!
Dubbed “the Yelp of job reviews” by nobody except me, Glassdoor.com is a cool site to read real reviews about careers, salaries, and benefits for tons of jobs across the country. And last year, Glassdoor took on the herculean task of analyzing hundreds of thousands of resumes and their corresponding salary reports.
The end goal? Ranking which majors pay the most money for the first five years out of college.
For the 18-22 year old readers among us, this article could make you a couple hundred thousand dollars richer over your lifetime.
For those of us a little older, let’s all enjoy a peek down some different career paths, and strongly consider forwarding this piece to any college bound friends/cousins/kids in our lives.
In honor of graduation season, here are their results:
The 10 Lowest Paying Majors
While not technically the 10 least paying majors, these did round out #40 through #50 on Glassdoor’s list. And since I’ve been giving myself a headache trying to think up more than 50 college majors, I think it’s safe to say these are some of the worst paying college degrees possible.
50. Biology
- Median Base Salary: $41,250
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Lab Assistant, Paramedic, Tutor
49. Social Work
- Median Base Salary: $41,656
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Social Worker, Mental Health Counselor, Camp Counselor
48. Healthcare Administration
- Median Base Salary: $42,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Medical Assistant, File Clerk, Office Manager
47. Sociology
- Median Base Salary: $42,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: HR Assistant, Account Manager, Administrative Assistant
46. Psychology
- Median Base Salary: $42,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Case Manager, Mental Health Counselor, Sales Associate
45. Liberal Arts
- Median Base Salary: $42,500
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Sales Manager, Receptionist, Teacher
44. Biochemistry
- Median Base Salary: $42,672
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Research Technician, Pharmacy Technician, Chemist
43. Hospitality Management
- Median Base Salary: $42,734
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Food and Beverage Manager, Front Desk Manager, Housekeeping Manager
42. Anthropology
- Median Base Salary: $43,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Project Coordinator, Research Assistant, Administrative Assistant
41. Education
- Median Base Salary: $43,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Special Education Teacher, Elementary School Teacher, Language Arts Teacher
40. Sports Management
- Median Base Salary: $43,156
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Personal Trainer, Sales Associate, Production Assistant
The Money Wizard’s Thoughts:
Ouch… not a good showing for the -ology’s.
Special shout out to Anthropology, Sociology, and Liberal Arts, whose three most popular entry level jobs have absolutely nothing to do with the major. These are clearly some of the least marketable degrees on the planet, and based on this data, one has to wonder if a single anthropology, sociology, or liberal arts job exists.
The 11 Highest Paying Majors
11. Finance
- Median Base Salary: $54,900
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Financial Analyst, Investment Banking Analyst, Accountant
10. Management Information Systems
- Median Base Salary: $58,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Network Administrator, Help Desk Analyst, Business Analyst
9. Nursing
- Median Base Salary: $58,928
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Registered Nurse, Licensed Vocational Nurse, Case Manager
8. Statistics
- Median Base Salary: $60,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Data Analyst, Statistician, Data Scientisit
7. Civil Engineering
- Median Base Salary: $61,500
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Civil Engineer, Structural Engineer, Field Engineer
6. Information Technology
- Median Base Salary: $64,008
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Programmer Analyst, Technical Support, Systems Engineer
5. Industrial Engineering
- Median Base Salary: $64,381
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Industrial Engineer, Quality Engineer, Production Planner
4. Chemical Engineering
- Median Base Salary: $65,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Chemical Engineer, Process Engineer, Project Engineer
3. Mechanical Engineering
- Median Base Salary: $68,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Mechanical Engineer, Design Engineer, Project Engineer
2. Electrical Engineering
- Median Base Salary: $68,438
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Electrical Engineer, Systems Engineer, Software Developer
1. Computer Science
- Median Base Salary: $70,000
- Popular Entry-Level Jobs: Software Engineer, Systems Engineer, Web Developer
The Money Wizard’s Thoughts:
Some of you might be tempted to say I made this list 11 majors long just so my own major could make the cut. Well, you’d be right.
Also, notice the number of entry level job titles directly related to these degrees. Engineering majors become Engineers, Nursing majors become Nurses, and Statistics majors become Statisticians, etc. In other words, there are actually jobs for these majors.
In general, students in these fields walk out with a degree that tells the world, “I picked up a marketable skill.”
To be frank, nobody actually knows what the hell a sociologist does. Everyone can trust that an Accounting major (just barely missed the Top 11 at #14) developed the skills to count some beans, or that a Nursing major has the skills to Nurse-It-Up.
Trade school gets this right. If you graduate with a certification as a plumber, the world knows you can fix toilets. Someone who graduates with a liberal arts degree can… do what exactly?
The Highest Paying College Majors, From My Own Experience:
I’ve come across a ton of these “ranking the college majors” type lists during my endless internet procrastinatio- oops, I mean research. Most seem a little unbelievable, while others are completely bogus.
This Glassdoor list far and away lines up the closest to how I’ve seen the real world treat me and my friends.
As of this writing I graduated college 4 years ago. Conveniently, this makes me and my peers perfect test subjects for a list claiming to rank job prospects for the first five years out of school.
Here’s how my own peer group stacked up:
- The only friend of mine who scored a 6 figure job directly out of college was a Mechanical Engineer (#3 major on this list).
- The Computer Science/MIS/IT folks all nabbed really well paying jobs right out of school, usually earning around $60-70,000. (#1, #6, #10 on this list).
- All the Engineers I knew were hired into well paying jobs easily.
- Business majors (#20) had no trouble finding a job, although they didn’t make as much as the Accounting (#14) or Finance (#11) majors.
- Liberal Arts, Psychology, Sociology, and Antropology majors (#45, 46, 47, 40) all went to graduate school or are working as restaurant servers, because there were no jobs.
- The Biology majors (#50) all applied to medical school, and were deathly afraid of not getting in because of the major’s lack of career prospects.
Personally, I started college as a Economics/Pre-Law major, thinking law school would be a ticket to riches. I quickly came to two realizations:
- Being a lawyer is extremely boring.
- Most law schools are a scam.
I won’t bore you with the details of #2 unless you’re considering law school yourself (email me first!) but basically, the lawyer market is completely over saturated, law school costs a ton of money, and most lawyers make less than truck drivers.
How could this be? All of my college’s academic advisers promised me that law was an incredibly prestigious career. They even had the salary numbers to back them up! (Hint: colleges lie. Continue reading to find out more.)
And yet here I was reading online blogs about actual law students exposing the truth. Come to think of it, the huge impact of those blogs is probably a big reason I’ve been so motivated to start my own.
Anyway, halfway through my sophomore year, I veered off from my original plan. I ditched the idea of law school, and I decided to add a second major to my Economics degree.
After looking through real life job postings, reading up on all the salary data I could find, and seeking out any mentor who would listen, I settled on adding Finance. Coupled with my natural interest in money, it was a good fit.
The change delayed my graduation by one year, but looking back, I feel I made the right decision. Having a dual degree looked more impressive on a resume, and I could see the eyes light up in recruiters whenever I finished my introduction with, “a dual degree in Economics AND Finance.”
The Finance degree was instrumental in getting my first job out of school, salaried at $52,000. Four years and a few promotions later, and I’m very fortunate to be earning a little over $80,000 a year in Finance.
Advice on Choosing a College Major
Do your own research. Do not make the mistake of blindly trusting your professors or academic advisors. Colleges lie. A lot.
Colleges inflate the salaries of graduates to make themselves look better. “Average salaries” published by universities usually have one giant freakin’ catch buried in the fine print – average salaries of people who found jobs in their field.
When 9 out of 10 Sports Science majors are working as baristas at starbucks, the colleges conveniently throw out that data as irrelevant.
When 1 out of those 10 gets a job lugging around football equipment for the Cincinnati Bengals making $43,000 a year… viola! The average Sports Science major can expect a dream job in professional sports making $43k, or so the advisors will say.
Colleges have a vested interest in graduating a nice even, bell curve distribution of all types of majors. Remember, the universities already have the staff of tenured professors with high salaries, funded research, and bloated budgets as a fixed cost. They need a steady trickle of interested students across all fields, or else they’re faced with a financial and administrative disaster.
Worse, most professors never actually had to find a job. They moved smoothly from an undergraduate degree to graduate school, right onto their Ph.D. and their current teaching position. Professors are often incredibly passionate about their subject, but also incredibly sheltered about the realities of the job market.
By the time you’re thrust into the real world, facing poor job prospects with an unmarketable degree, the colleges cheering you on with exaggerated salary statistics won’t be there to help you. They’ll have already cashed your check and moved onto their next freshman income stream.
How do you protect yourself against this deceitful system? Well, resources like this list are a good place to start. You can see the full glassdoor list here.
Consider these resources the starting point in your research. From there:
- Ask yourself what skill your major leaves you with.
- Scour job postings. I like Glassdor, Indeed.com, Monster.com, and whatever University exclusive job portal you have access to.
- Talk to graduated students in your major, and not just the ones the university proudly parades in front of the class.
- Attend career fairs, well before you’re in the market for a career. Ask employers what majors they are most interested in.
A college degree is a big decision. Do your research, and the lifetime return on your time (and tuition!) will be one of the best investments you ever make.
Readers, how does your major stack up? Were the job prospects and salaries for your degree what you expected, and are you happy with your decision? Let us know in the comments below!
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I was a biology major in college – chalk me up as someone with no backup! It was medical school or bust! I ended up getting in, but I had no idea what to do other than reapply next year if I didn’t.
Haha, glad you made it in! Congrats!
I have a BA in Applied Sociology and a Master’s in Liberal Studies. I have found I can do any job because I was taught to research well, think outside the box, and detect and solve problems. This is great for marketing yourself anywhere doing any job. i have worked as management in corporations, a home builder, and a teacher and coach. I have always made over $50,000 for any job I ever had. It’s not so much the degree, but what you learned and can apply from your education to the working work. Provide value and you will be rewarded.
You bring up a good point about marketing yourself. Learning how to interview well is one of the most valuable skills any job seeker can have.
If you had to do it over again, would you have gone down the same path? Or would you consider an undergrad degree that could earn about the same salary without spending so much time and money on graduate school?
I would love to get your opinion on why you think law schools are a scam? I am currently studying for the June LSAT and i would love to hear your opinion.
Thanks,
Arissa
Unlike medical schools, who keep a tight lid on the number of admissions and actively monitor the number of graduating MDs, there’s no limit on the standards for law school acceptance or how many lawyers graduate each year.
In the past few decades, as demand for advanced degrees continues to climb, law schools have popped up all over the country, eager to accept paying students. Many existing law schools have lowered their standards just to meet demand.
In a nutshell, the scam goes like this: accept as many students as possible by promising a prestigious law career, collect hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidized debt, and don’t worry about whether your graduates can actually find a job.
All of this has led to a surge in the supply of lawyers. Half of lawyers now start at a salary less than $62,000. 44% can’t find jobs as attorneys. When I first considered law so many years ago, I remember running into many recently graduated lawyers accepting unpaid internships, just to get some sort of law experience to distinguish themselves from the hordes of other lawyers graduating every semester.
Glassdoor’s list just showed 50 majors that can start at $40-70,000 per year. Why rack up $150,000 of law school debt to earn the same amount?
Here are a few good articles on the subject:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs/lawyer-salaries/
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/law-school-scam-getting-worse/412159/
http://www.atlredline.com/go-to-a-good-law-school-or-dont-go-at-all-1571965185
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/08/quinn-emanuel-partner-warns-dont-go-to-law-school/
http://abovethelaw.com/2013/04/if-you-dont-want-to-be-a-lawyer-dont-go-to-law-school/
Thank you for your insight! I appreciate it!
I received an “ology” degree in Psychology; but I took a much different career path than my peers who are just now sufficiently out of graduate school and are building their professional practices. When I switched from a general business degree track to psych with a business focus (and minor) my mother needed me to prove there was a market for what I wanted to do with the degree since she was paying for school. Im so grateful she challenged me to think practically about the situation instead of encouraging me to blindly follow my dreams! I explained my plan to begin a career in Market Research which, in 2013, had very high projected growth and plenty of jobs in my target city. After graduation I had an internship in MR and then moved on to full time work as a Market Research Analyst. Since then I’ve moved up and I’ve gone on to a more MR sales-focused role and my salary has increased significantly; but I feel like my experience with a psych degree is not the norm!!
I too was a finance major, but I was really focused on law school. Thankfully I wised up and didn’t go – my feeling on law is the same as yours! Luckily finance worked out fine, but if I had to do it all over again I might have gone accounting to add the CPA credential.
I didn’t look at the methodology of those statistics but the truth is probably much worse than it looks for the liberal art degrees since they may face higher unemployment, and as a slap in the face, most of the higher salary liberal art careers require taking on graduate school debt.
I majored in Finance and minored in econ and overall it was a good decision. While some engineering degrees take 5 years potentially costing more in student tuition or loans, it’s worth pointing out that the higher starting salary of engineering degrees can be advantageous to people who plan on retiring early since you get the immediate benefit of a higher salary, while on the other hand econ/finance majors typically get higher salaries later in their career. This is why I chose econ/finance over tech…I told myself that the late career salary increase would be worth it, not realizing that I’d retire early.
Great points Julian.
I’ve noticed that’s a pretty common way to fudge the numbers. Colleges often lump graduate degrees into the statistics, which misleads undergrads in their expectations.
And good point about the timing of earnings between engineering/finance. Thanks for the comment!
I was a psychology major which was great to learn, but your right with a bachelors degree, there’s nothing. I went to medical school.
My sister got a BA in and she ended up being a manager at a restaurant that she worked at for years before, during and after college.
I also know a lady that went to law school and couldn’t find a job for 3 years in her field. She eventually found a job reviewing contracts for a company.
Having a daughter that will be in 11th grade next year it’s great timing for this.
Your post is spot on! Wonderful!
Thanks for sharing your stories, and best of luck with your daughter’s college decisions!
BA in sociology for my sister… sorry.
I wanted to go to Med School and the “natural” route my advisors told me was to get into one of the Sciences’ Bachelor route and start applying to get into med school in the 2nd or 3rd year (as long as my grades are good).
If I’m spending all that energy, time and money to become a doctor, I wanted to find out first if working in healthcare was right for me (Can I handle the blood and gore? Do I like helping people in that capacity? Etc.) but all the Sciences courses were about theories and working in a lab. I didn’t think they could provide me the experience that I need to decide if I wanted to go ahead with the med school route.
That’s when Nursing kind of popped up (and was also something my parents suggested when I told them I had doubts about a Bachelor in one of the Sciences then med school). It immediately made sense to me. It was a 4 your degree with clinical experiences already built in. And it leads straight to a defined job at graduation.
I graduated with my Nursing degree 3 years ago and I found that I’m actually quite happy in this position. I work alongside doctors at the hospital so I can see and hear about their lifestyle. To me, that lifestyle was not at all appealing – though I have so much more respect for doctors now! I will not be persuing med school because I feel like what I’m doing is enough and suits my personality better.
I’ll tell you something though. I live in Alberta, Canada where oil and gas is our bread and butter. Engineers and those working in the industry make a crap-ton of money. But then we hit a recession in 2014 when the price of oil tanked. Thousands of people in the oil and gas industry lost their jobs… and we’re still dealing with lasting effects of the recession with many still unemployed or forced to relocate to find jobs. I managed to hold onto my job and actually there was an increase in healthcare hiring during that time. People will always need healthcare so I’m fortunate I “stumbled” into what I do and ended up being the right fit for me.
Thanks for sharing your story Jaymee!
Sounds like you found yourself the perfect position. Out of curiosity, would applying to medical school sometime in the future be an option? If so, I’m surprised the nursing route isn’t recommended more for aspiring doctors.
#1! I exited college in 2010 and at that time all the majors were having trouble finding full time jobs. Things got better fast for comp sci though.
Salary never was the reason for my major and I’ve met few where it has. Awesome side affect though.
Cool to know I can fall back as an HR assistant with my sociology minor 😉
It is also funny/ sad to see the statistics on how many people with a degree actually get jobs in the field they got their major in. And how many of those fortunate students stay in that career path. I bet not too many. College is a huge time and money investment and most probably don’t get out of it what they expect to. But that being said, just having the piece of paper is a plus trying to get a foot in the door at a company wither it is in your field or not.
I’m going to suggest something even more rude: too many are going to college. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has data showing that twice as many graduate from college as needed. And that employers demand degrees twice as often as justified based upon the knowledge and skills actually required. Even some STEM fields are flooded with way more applicants than jobs (see IEEE data).
The notion that every kid should go to college is frankly ludicrous. And contrary to endless employer bleating, in aggregate our population is already overeducated for the available jobs. Key phrase here is “available jobs”. Because the quality of most jobs is simply not so grand, and won’t need that much education to successfully perform. But as the college diploma has replaced the high school diploma as the entry requirement for even quite mundane positions, I place a lot of the blame for this on employer’s excessive, even silly, requirements.
I’m a physician assistant and I started with 6 figures right out of school (PA school was 5 years right out of high school). Very happy with my choice!
“Worse, most professors never actually had to find a job.” This is false. In fact, the opposite is true. Every professor had to find a job; that job is Professor. We just had a job opening for a professor; 140 PhD’s applied, one got hired. So yeah, it’s easy to get a job as a professor, as long as you’re the best out of 140 PhD mathematicians (in this case). Clearly I disagree when you say we’re “incredibly sheltered about the job market.” You also wrote, “They moved smoothly from an undergraduate degree to graduate school, right onto their Ph.D. and their current teaching position.” What’s so smooth about becoming a world-class expert in a given subject, better than the next 139 world-class experts? I think your paragraph should have read more like this: “Professors know full well the difficulties in the job market; in fact they likely worked harder to get their current job than you will ever work to achieve any goal in your entire life.”
*never actually had to find a job outside of academia.
I have tons of respect for the incredibly grueling path professors have gone through. Like you said, it’s far more intense than anything most people will ever experience.
I just want students to think critically when, for example, an anthropology professor brags on all the high paying positions available to anthropology majors, despite the fact that anthropology professor may or may not have ever attempted to find a career using their major, outside the bubble of academia.
Obviously professors are experts. And most have their thumb on the pulse of their job market. But there’s also a subset, mostly in the low paying social sciences, who mislead students about their job prospects. Whether that’s intentional or the result of those professors’ removal from the business world, I’m not sure.
Thanks for your reply. I also want students to think critically about the job market (even though I never tried to find a job outside of academia). That’s how I stumbled upon this article from Google (despite being subscribed to your blog already). I was searching for some stats to wake them up and get them thinking. Some of the students, not having really thought about it, may assume there is a job for every graduate, regardless of the number of graduates. On top of this, some may be unwilling to move and assume this job will be waiting for them in their hometown.
New reader here (38-year old male). You have a lot of great insights in this post — including points that are not often talked about. This is such an important topic that is often overlooked by well-meaning parents (e.g. “Johnny wants to study political science, and we don’t want to get in the way of his dreams.”)
I also think it’s helpful to think beyond starting salary — to think about salary 10 years or even 20 years out of college. My engineering friends came out of school with great job prospects and solid salaries, but they can get “stuck” and receive basic cost-of-living raises each year — and then get left in the dust relative to salespeople (e.g. software sales or medical sales) or business folks (e.g. business/finance people that climb the corporate ladder, like you).
People skills are often what can get you to a really attractive income. If you’re an engineer or computer science major with the ability to communicate well and connect with people, you can rise up in your company better than your peers.
Keep up the fantastic work with this blog!