For many aspiring students, the decision to attend college comes with daunting warnings, such as years of crippling debt. Now there’s one more thing to be wary of: Even if having an advanced degree will lead to higher earning potential in the future, the new analysis says about 30% of students won’t earn enough money to offset the cost of tuition.
All things considered, the decision to attend college involves many financial decisions that the typical high school graduate may not have much insight into, including how to pay off student debt and how much they can expect to earn from their chosen career. degrees. High school students are most interested in going to college to gain a good job that will help them earn more money— but according to the new law, about a third of educational programs do not provide a return on the investment for which people pay tuition. report from the Equal Opportunity Research Foundation, which analyzed how much people spend on higher education and how much they earn over their lifetime.
The report says the financial rewards of a higher education are more often worth it than not, but they vary greatly depending on the major a student chooses, and this creates conflict when students choose between vocational schools to optimize their financial return or field pursuit they may hate but they will pay well.
According to the report, on average, bachelor’s degrees in fields such as engineering, computer science, nursing and economics provide the greatest financial return on investment or earnings compared to how expensive the degree is. For example, a student with an engineering degree can expect to earn a lifetime salary of about $950,000, while a student with a nursing degree can expect to earn a lifetime salary of about $618,000.
When choosing a college and degree program, the most important variable students should consider is how much they will earn, according to Preston Cooper, the report’s lead author.
“A high-income career path will provide benefits for decades, while high tuition costs will only have to be paid for for a few years at most,” Cooper said.
Other fields, especially the fine arts, provide significantly less financial return. A bachelor’s degree in psychology, humanities, or English language and literature is among those that provide the least financial return; On average, students who earned a fine arts degree actually lost about $88,000 over their lifetime.
In these areas, Cooper says there are still ways to ensure a college degree remains valuable. For example, he said, in the case of the English major, “there is evidence that when combined with more tangible skills and marketing, graduates can increase the return on investment they receive to increase the value of the degree they receive after college.” .
Vocational schools can offer a higher return on investment than a traditional bachelor’s degree because, according to Cooper, they are often shorter programs that cost less in tuition and offer a direct path to higher-paying jobs in fields such as HVAC and construction. However, the profitability of vocational schools varies by field, he said, adding that a cosmetology degree does not provide the same returns.
The report found that nearly a quarter of four-year degree programs have a negative return on investment, as do 43% of two-year degree programs. For example, a bachelor’s degree in drama at the University of Southern California costs students more than $160,000 over four years, but graduates of the program earn $10,000 less than if they got a job for which they don’t need the degree, the report found. . .
Meanwhile, other areas can be extremely profitable. The report estimates that graduates of Princeton University’s computer engineering program can earn more than $7 million over their lifetime.
Regardless of field, college enrollment rates were decline over the last decadeaccording to report from College Transitions, a data-driven blog created by researchers and former school admissions officers. Several factors are responsible for this trend, including declining birth rate in the country, reduction in immigration, pandemicAnd rising college costs. For students who often prioritize their ability to earn money when deciding whether to attend school, these financial concerns give way to additional stresses such as burnout and job dissatisfaction.
new study published by the Journal of Business and Psychology found a large gap between people’s career interests and the most in-demand occupations in the country, indicating that the most in-demand jobs in the labor market differ sharply from what people are interested in doing.
The study, which used national data on more than 1.2 million U.S. residents and Department of Labor employment data, found that people are most interested in jobs in the arts, but it is one of the least in-demand fields, with just 2% of vacancies on the market related to artistic interests. In contrast, the least popular job interest was described as systematic or detail-oriented work, which covered the most in-demand occupations.