The truth is that earning a degree is important, but what you do with it is more crucial. In 15 categories, 171 majors are examined in this book. It analyses earnings by major and includes significant breakdowns of racial/ethnic and gender wage disparities.
Bachelor's degrees typically pay off. But a recent study has found that some college majors are significantly more lucrative than others. In fact, the prospective earnings between the two majors can vary by more than 300 percent.
The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce is assisting Americans in making the link between college majors and professional earnings using newly made public United States Census data. The latest study, What's it Worth? This pioneering study, The Economic Value of College Majors, highlights how important a student's major choice is to their median wages.
Even after accounting for the expense of college and lost wages, the authors find that all undergraduate majors are worthwhile, despite the wide range in lifetime incomes. Although the lifetime advantage varies from $241,000 for education majors to $1,090,000 for engineering majors.
With few exceptions, the survey indicates that majors are substantially segregated by gender and race/ethnicity. White men tend to be concentrated in majors that pay the greatest salaries, whereas women are often concentrated in majors that pay the lowest salaries.
