The Wall St Journal published a new analysis of employment rates, median salaries and popularity of multiple majors which makes for interesting reading. If you want the best pay, try Petroleum Engineering. If you want to ensure you get a job, try Actuarial Science, Pharmacology or, get this, Educational Administration (is this confirmation that we really do have an education crisis?). Sadly for some, the unemployment rates are high. Clinical Psychology majors face a problem that they won’t be able to treat themselves with over 19% of them not employed, and it’s sadly not much better for various Fine Arts graduates or, tragically, Library Science grads who hover around the 15% unemployment rate. Interestingly, things look much better if your degree is Information Science, which not only gives you a greater chance of being employed (with a 6% unemployment rate) but the median salary is higher too.
The data does not entirely square with Library Journal’s own survey of ALA-accredited program graduates which suggests an average starting salary of over $42k and only a 6.2% unemployment rate. However, comparisons are not helped by the fact that the data sets are not easily reconciled. LJ takes data from program regardless of the name of the major (our graduates earn a Masters of Science in Information Studies), and it’s less clear exactly what WSJ includes under each of their major categories (one suspects these are undergraduate data which really make no real sense for this major). One lesson WSJ can provide though is how to make searching the data easier as their interactive table allows for far more convenient searching than the published tables on the LJ site.
The bigger picture here is what the WSJ survey tells us about what our employment sector values in education. It’s not all obvious as teachers, nurses, and science majors all seem to find work. And even when it’s bad (as in clinical psychology) the reality is that the vast majority of graduates end up employed, regardless of major. Further proof perhaps that education really pays off?