The Wall Street Journal commissioned an informative survey recently, asking 11,000 people who graduated from college between 1999 and 2010 about the pay they received from their first jobs. They matched them with college major, and the results aren’t surprising.
Here’s a breakdown:
Engineering $56,000
Computer Science 50,000
Civil Engineering 49,000
Accounting 43,000
Economics 42,000
Finance 41,000
Biology 38,000
Business 38,000
Marketing 37,000
Political Science 36,000
Psychology 35,000
Communications 34,000
English 34,000
I can’t tell from the survey whether the researchers included how hard it was for people in different fields to find a job, but if the odds are more or less equal, then one can say that business degrees (currently the most popular undergraduate degree in the country by far) don’t pay all that much better than English degrees do. One expert quoted in the WSJ this morning found that “mid-career liberal arts majors she works with in northern Colorado make between $60,000 and $70,000. Those with technical degrees make at least $10,000 more.”
It seems from the numbers above that engineers make a lot more than $10K more than liberal-arts majors, but if business and finance degrees pay only $10K more to people in their 40s, then I can say with some confidence (depending on the employment odds question posed above) to undergrads who ask me about relative success of English majors and business majors that if they really love to read and study history, philosophy, and the fine arts . . . do it.
10 Responses to Why Major in English?
marktropolis - October 25, 2010 at 8:23 pm
a) a link or two would be good
b) an English major does not equal all other Liberal Arts degrees
c) it would be good to know what the connection is (if any) between degree and chosen job.
d) business or finance degree doesn’t equal technical degree.
e) about this “mid-career liberal arts major,” perhaps there was some additional education? Or got lucky with a job? Anecdote doesn’t equal statistical validity.
bioemeritus - October 26, 2010 at 10:38 am
Hear, hear!
30 years ago, I was at a dinner with a visiting speaker who was VP for research for a very big pharmaceutical company. A colleague asked him what courses we should be having our majors take. His reply was something like “Don’t worry about the science. We’ll teach them all they need if they know the basics. What I want is someone who can tell me what they want to do, why, what the outcomes will be, and how much it will cost in two pages or five minutes. My time is valuable.”
In the world of business, that holds in spades. My daughters both hold high-level jobs in strong corporations, one in IT, the other in HR. Their majors? One was in communication, the other in classics. Both communicate very clearly, have ambition, work hard, and are constantly educating themselves. That puts them in a very small percentage of Americans, regardless of major.
11147066 - October 26, 2010 at 12:19 pm
There is nothing wrong with majoring in English if you plan to go to law school or into business…I am all for the actual leaders in our society having a well-rounded liberal arts background, and they and society will benefit. But those are not the students with the passion! The ones with the passion envision a life of the mind (academia, writing, publishing), and they need to be warned that they will have the life of the mind and no food on the table. Those are the students who should encouraged to pursue a lucrative trade which will enable them to support a lifetime of avocational reading, writing, theater…in this day and age, even semi-professional blogging if they like.
22040003 - October 26, 2010 at 12:35 pm
When my niece wanted to major in English and everyone kept asking her what she would do, I told her three things:
1)If you can’t follow your heart’s desire when you are 18, it is not going to get easier to do so later in life.
2)Anyone in her generation who learned to write well would be fine, because no one can write worth a darn anymore.
3)There are a few fields where you can assume a graduate degree is in your future and English is one of them, so if advanced degrees are not your thing, choose something more practical.
She went to an elite liberal arts school, which does make a difference, but bottom line is she has a nice job in academic publishing. She is considering her graduate school options. Since she has a liberal arts degree, she has many options.
Both of my children chose more practical options (which they were also passionate about), since advanced schooling does not not appeal to them.
All concerned are gainfully employed and doing just fine. Undergraduate students should be encouraged to foolw their hearts.
glord - October 26, 2010 at 3:12 pm
I have been telling students this for over 25 years.
betterschools - October 26, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I think majoring in English is a wonderful option for those who understand the issues and choose to pursue the degree as fully informed participants. Moreover, I see it as their right.
Two issues are in the way.
First, virtually every college and university in the nation lacks the transparency necessary to support a fully informed decision. Few of us shopping for any other major purchase would accept the level of opacity comparable to missing graduation rates, average cost and time to degree, average delays in time to degree, opportunity costs of delays, employment rates, salaries 1, 3, & 5 years out, and so on. I’m not suggesting that these metrics should have equal relevance for each student. Some of them will have no relevance for some students, and that is fine. I am suggesting that a forthright institution would see it as a moral duty to make these decision-support metrics available for each program (such statistics are absolutely useless when reported for the institution in the aggregate). They do not see it as their moral obligation and expend considerable resources to obfuscate the issues.
Second, the feds idea of Gainful Employment, while currently directed only at the for-profits, is headed your way, irrespective of your charter. The feds are well on their way to federalizing higher education in preparation for international harmonizing. They have successfully introduced and socialized some of the changes in narrow niches to get the profession used to what is coming. Personally, I would prefer that the feds not have the right to tell me that a degree has to result in a particular level of earnings to qualify for a loan. I wish to retain the right to choose a completely “worthless” degree, so long as I can pay for it, including show that I can pay back my loan.
If you want to preserve the part of U.S. higher education we are discussing, now is the time to become transparent and to use that platform to resist the feds thus far successful attempts to take over.
lexalexander - October 26, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Why major in English? The Chronicle published an excellent, if indirect, answer to that question just two days ago:
http://chronicle.com/article/William-Blakes-America-2010/125024/
trendisnotdestiny - October 27, 2010 at 8:04 am
@ No one in particular,
If you build it, they will come!
If you waste it, they will leave!
If you let it fall into disrepair, they lose its relevance!
If you privatize it, they become ‘de-skilled’ receptacles!
If you build it, they will come!
willynilly - October 27, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Thank you for the completely innocuous essay you presented today. Keep all your essays in this vein and you will avoid the serious trouble you usually create when you venture away from purely vanilla topics.
dank48 - October 28, 2010 at 1:38 pm
One good reason to major in English in this country is that you’ll probably have occasion to use it. That’s more than many of us can say about our own erstwhile major.
I don’t know where people got the idea that what you study in college has anything to do with what you end up doing for a living. But, then, a major progression from chemical engineering to mathematics to Germanic languages (comp lit/English minor) is no beacon to follow.