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In the United States today, there is no more certain investment than a college education. On average, college graduates make 84 percent more over a lifetime than their high school-educated counterparts. Until now, though, that overall number has been virtually the only information available on the economic benefits of a college education. If you wanted to know specifics about what, say, an English degree might mean in the labor market, you were largely out of luck. But not anymore. For the first time, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce has tackled that issue head on, with a detailed analysis of earnings and employment outcomes for different undergraduate majors.
What’s It Worth, by Georgetown University, in the US, demonstrates just how critical the choice of undergraduate major is to a student’s potential earnings. While everyone who attends college can expect a significant return on their investment, different undergraduate majors lead to markedly different careers — and significantly different wages. In one of the most extreme examples, for instance, the report finds that Counseling Psychology majors make median earnings of $29,000 per year, compared to $120,000 for Petroleum Engineering majors.
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