Can degrees be really worthless?
Worthless Degrees, Now and Then
By Vedran Vuk
Whether discussing the slow economy or recent graduate unemployment, readers seem to always find a culprit in worthless degrees. Hence due to popular demand, I embarked on a short study of the issue. Before crunching the data from the Department of Education, I agreed with our readers. But one fact always bothered me. I’ve heard the same complaint about college degrees as long as I can remember. Surely, a trend would reveal itself in the data. The results were mixed.
To begin, let’s look at some often-considered useless majors:
The common view holds that useless degrees as a proportion of graduates are on the rise, but this chart indicates the reverse. Since 1970, there is a clear decline. In the early ‘90s, things did become worse again – but only shortly.
The highs of the early ‘70s make sense. I might not have been born in the era, but I’ve seen the Woodstock footage. The film does not lie, and neither do the education statistics. Higher proportions of English, Sociology, and History majors naturally came with the hippie movement.
Another anomaly is the second hump between 1991 and 1994. Notice that it appears across the majors. While the ‘70s are easily explainable, the second hump hides a bigger mystery. Remember that these are graduates. The peaks graduating in 1994 began college in 1990 or 1989.
Now on to more respected and challenging majors. Though these degrees don’t necessarily lead to an amazing career, they are impressive. Finding a job in physics isn’t easy, but a physics graduate is still far more remarkable than a political science grad.
Few students entered these fields beforehand. But now there are even fewer. Notice the lack of a particular pattern compared to the above chart. The humps in the early ‘70s and early ‘90s are missing –the decline is slow but steady.
Since mathematics is always set as an educational benchmark, I wanted a closer look:
Math degrees conform to the common view. There’s clearly a strong downward trend from 3 percent to just below 1 percent. This major is telling as it combines difficulty with application. With a math degree, one can enter almost any field. Further on the higher levels, the complexity surpasses most other degrees. Unfortunately, few are taking the challenge.
Another celebrated major is always engineering:
The early 1980s appeared to be the golden age of engineering. This relates to the first chart. Suddenly, fewer students were focusing on sociology and history. Instead, engineering became all the rage. Evaluating the current state of engineering depends on the starting point. Compared to 1971, we’re about even. But from the mid-1980s, the trend is clearly downhill.
So, where are the upward trends? For one, business majors have reached a plateau:
This partially goes along with the hippie explanation. What do hippies hate? Business, of course. And clearly 1970 is a low point for the major. However, increasing business degrees aren’t necessarily a good thing. A business degree isn’t a golden ticket. In my opinion, it’s a neutral diploma. The degree gives one the tools to succeed extraordinarily, but it does not guarantee success. On the other hand, a good statistics major has a job in the bag. A talented business major isn’t guaranteed anything. The sky is the limit, but the counter at Starbucks is a possibility as well – especially in this environment.
Overall, the future doesn’t seem to be getting definitively worse. If anything, we’re converging away from the hardest and easiest degrees to those somewhere in between. 1970 had plenty of useless majors, but also more students interested in mathematics and science. This makes sense. Not everyone was a hippie back then. There were still plenty of hard-working students around.
The far more interesting aspect of these charts is the graduates between 1980 and 1986. They are almost a forgotten great American generation. They had the lowest proportions of worthless majors. Business degrees exploded from abysmal lows. And engineering reached a peak. In a recent article, I discovered that this era also had the highest rate of labor force participation for recent grads in four decades. No one talks much about this group, but I think that they’re worth admiring.
