STEM sells
Still, if students have their eyes trained on post-college life, STEM subjects like engineering and computer science continue to make sense. A YouGov survey found that 61% of Americans believe a major in engineering leads to “above average earnings”, while just 19% felt the same way about studying foreign language — and that was the highest-rated humanities subject.
Those generalizations are borne out in earnings data, at least per 2023 analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which reveals that STEM disciplines dominate the post-college earnings tables. In fact, a typical graduate from any of the 9 different schools of engineering in the study can expect to earn over $100k a year by the mid-point of their career, with degrees in computer science, finance and pharmacy also good for breaking into the six-figure club.
By comparison, students who majored in foreign languages, English language, philosophy, or history are typically taking home $65-70k by the midpoint of their career, with higher rates of unemployment. According to the data, 9.1% of grads who majored in philosophy and 7.8% who majored in foreign languages are unemployed, compared to an average of 4.6% for engineers. Fine arts graduates are most likely to be unemployed after leaving college, with a staggering 12.1% unemployment rate for students from that discipline.
Oh, the humanities!
As a data-driven newsletter, you might assume we would cheer the decline of the humanities, celebrating the rise of hard-nosed number-obsessed graduates. But, even we view the trend with more than a tinge of sadness — as our job is as much about finding human connections to relatable data-driven stories, a skill often honed through studying culture, as it is raw number-crunching in spreadsheets. The problem for would-be writers, linguists and historians is that — with college costs rising and incomes falling behind — the math just doesn’t quite seem to be adding up.
