A new report by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce has found that the degrees with the highest earning median salaries involve engineering, math, or science. Liberal Arts and Humanities majors, including English, History, and Philosophy, earning median incomes of only $47,000 annually, end up in the middle of the pack. Some of the majors with the lowest median earnings are Counseling/Psychology, Education, Social Work, and Visual and Performing Arts majors.
Seven of the top 10 highest paying majors were in Engineering with Petroleum Engineering majors topping the list at about $120,000 a year. Surprisingly, Business Administration, which is currently the most popular major, was not one of the most lucrative degrees falling behind degrees such as Occupational Therapy and Information Technology.
Even more interesting, fields with virtually no un-employment were found to be: Geological and Geophysical Engineering, Military Technologies, Pharmacology, and School Student Counseling. And fields that had the highest unemployment, ranging from 16 to 11 percent were: Social Psychology, Nuclear Engineering, and Educational Administration and Supervision.
However, this should not encourage students to immediately switch their educational paths to pursue science and math as the study does not factor in graduate degrees. English majors who go on to be lawyers or Philosophy majors that go on to pursue MBA degrees are not represented in the study. At some schools, almost two thirds of Liberal Arts students go on to careers in the for-profit sector and employees strongly agree that Liberal Arts graduates, who learned critical thinking skills, often do well in management roles.
Overall, college and university graduates make 84 percent more over a lifetime than those with only high school diplomas, so the decision to pursue higher education is a great choice regardless of intended major.
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