Hoping for a job? Choose these degrees
Survey finds unlikely hierarchy of which fields offer the best results
Until college graduation, most students spend their lives preparing for one thing: a job.
Unemployment among college graduates has been on the decline in the past decade.
But just how marketable is your degree? That English major is still going to make it difficult to find a job after college, but so will a math degree.
Of the 2,005 graduates polled in a Course Hero survey, 80% with an English degree were employed. Only 76% of math majors were employed.
Architecture, physical or environmental sciences, and communications majors, had the highest rates of employment, at 96%, 95% and 93%, respectively. Architecture majors were also the most likely to have a job secured before they graduated from college.
The survey, conducted June 5-16, polled people who obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher from 2007 to 2017.
Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer said he hopes students will use the information to help them look toward the future and ask practical questions about choosing a major.
“Nobody can predict the future,” Grauer said in an email to USA TODAY College. “It’s valuable for college students to think beyond what they enjoy studying today when they select a major and ask themselves questions such as, where could this area of study take me?”
The survey found just 16% of college graduates would choose the same major again. But for a graduate like Catherine Lanyon, despite a “stressful” job search, given the choice to do college all over again, she wouldn’t sacrifice her passion for practicality.
Lanyon, a 2017 graduate of Boston University who received a bachelor of science degree in English education, described her job search for a teaching position as stressful and frustrating.
“I knew that I would be paid little and that getting or keeping a job might become more complicated as society advances and expects more from educators,” Lanyon told USA TODAY College. “But I would not change my childhood dreams for anything.”
to beyond“It’s valuablefor studentsthink college what enjoy they studying today when they select a major.” Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer