20 Worst Paying College Degrees

[Totenkindly]

20-worst-paying-college-degrees-in-2010: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

It includes working with kids, art, music, and culinary pursuits. The article says to tap the highest level of pay, one should be taking courses that involve a lot of math.

A conversation from this could head in many directions:

• What are our cultural values, embodied in which fields we are willing and able to pay higher prices for and which fields are less rewarded? Do the financial rewards we hand out to various occupations align with what our culture claims to value?
• Where does salary/financial reward rank in terms of career satisfaction?
• Are college degrees worth the money invested in them nowadays? (...considering that my first year of tuition was $18K, at a prestigious liberal arts school, and that is now the typical price for a basic state school and the school I attended is somewhere around $36K a year, not counting living expenses) Or are they now just mandated worthlessness since everyone is expected to go but the knowledge acquired isn't very useful?

 

[Aquarelle]

That's freaking depressing. I've worked in education for almost 5 years and I still don't even make the "starting pay" listed under that field.

Of course, my major was in foreign language. I'm surprised not to see that on the list!

 

[Totenkindly]

Actually, foreign languages are extremely important nowadays, due to increased globalization, at least in terms of being applied within other disciplines. The Hispanic population in the US continues to increase as well, but it's not just espanol that can be helpful in getting a job.

 

[gromit]

Jennifer, have you read the book The Gift? I haven't read it, but my friend who's a classically trained violinist LOOOOVES the book. It talks about gift economies (focusing on interpersonal bonds) and market economies (value of a particular service) and how you cannot even measure the worth of things like childcare, education, etc., and in a market economy those types of services will always be undervalued. In gift economies, that type of work is placed in the highest regard, and the people who perform it are supported by gifts from the community. In a market economy, though, you have to assign value to everything.

Not sure if I'm recalling it 100% correctly based off of the friend's description of the book to me... anyway, that might be an interesting way to approach the topic.

My parents pushed us toward technical/math-heavy careers for this reason, so we could finance our educations and ultimately ourselves. It makes sense, but I might have had more fun doing something else... who even knows?

 

[Aquarelle]

Yeah, I actually have used my French frequently in both of the jobs I've held in my professional career. But usually it's more useful to double major in a foreign language and business, or something, or major in something more "useful" and just take classes in a foreign language. Majoring in a foreign language alone is not terribly lucrative. Teachers make crap. Translators make crap. Interpreters make crap. Even those at the UN don't make that much, and they have to be fluent in at least 3 languages.

 

[Totenkindly]

Yeah, I actually have used my French frequently in both of the jobs I've held in my professional career. But usually it's more useful to double major in a foreign language and business, or something, or major in something more "useful" and just take classes in a foreign language. Majoring in a foreign language alone is not terribly lucrative.

Yeah, that is basically what I meant.
It's a lucrative skill but not on its own.

Teachers make crap. Translators make crap.

Actually, I had a friend (who was a member here for awhile) who was a Russian interpreter (of documents and news articles) for about 20 years for the fed gov in the Wash DC area. He made decent money, although he also managed other translators. Unfortunately the market for Russian dried up over the years; nowadays, Chinese is far more valuable.

 

[Aquarelle]

Actually, I had a friend (who was a member here for awhile) who was a Russian interpreter (of documents and news articles) for about 20 years for the fed gov in the Wash DC area. He made decent money, although he also managed other translators. Unfortunately the market for Russian dried up over the years; nowadays, Chinese is far more valuable.

Yeah... there are definitely some translators and interpreters who make good money, whether for a corporation or the government, and the people who translate popular books like Harry Potter....but most... not so much. I wanted to be a translator. Now I just do it occasionally on the side.

As for your original questions... yeah, still super depressing!! I still think college is a good idea because it teaches people to think and generally broadens their understanding of the world. But I don't really think it's worth going to prestigious schools that cost a lot of money. At least not for some students. If you're going to major in business or engineering or something, it probably makes more sense to go to a more prestigious school. But for those of us in the lowly education field... well, considering my husband makes a heck of a lot more than I do and he does a job that does not require a college degree (although he does have one), I can't say it's worth going into heavy debt for an expensive school.

That said, for me, money is definitely not the primary measure of job satisfaction. As I said, I make under $35K a year, and I am pretty happy. Granted, until I got a raise at the beginning of this year, I did struggle a bit, and especially before my husband and I moved in together, I struggled a lot to make ends meet. So, to take a line from a Silverchair song, "You say that money isn't everything, well I'd like to see you live without it." It's not everything, and I'd rather make just enough to live comfortably and actually enjoy my job and do something I can feel good at, than make a crapload of money and do a job I hate. But the fact is that money is necessary, and if you're constantly struggling to make ends meet, you're going to have a lot more stress, even if you love your job. Sucks, but it's true.

I really think people should be paid according to what their job contributes to the well-being of mankind. Social workers should be paid much more, in my opinion. Teachers, too. CEOs, stock traders, etc.... should be paid less.

 

[Chunes]

Or are they now just mandated worthlessness since everyone is expected to go but the knowledge acquired isn't very useful?

This one, definitely.

It's not even that the knowledge isn't useful; it's that we've provided a mass way to climb the ladder. I guess some people in high up positions don't understand the concept of value. Something isn't valuable unless it's rare. I have to wonder how much longer this mass delusion can hold. Young people need to start realizing that college is a terrible investment with lessening exceptions.

It's incredibly insulting and hurts my brain that the default expectation of young people is that they should load themselves down with debt. That's not okay, and not a way a healthy, functional society should work. And don't bring up scholarships. Nearly everyone is still back in the 70's. The reality is that scholarships are mostly a pipe dream from that era.

 

[Stanton Moore]

I should have become a stock broker. That is aparently the only career worth pursuing, based on the implications of that article.
Money uber alles. It's the Amerikan way.

 

[JustHer]

Horticulture lol

 

[Snuggletron]

lol human capital. Your talents are only as useful and meaningful as your farmer decides. You can always go against that though, it will just mean less respek and monies.

 

[INA]

Horticulture lol

Srsly.
Recreation & Leisure? Athletic Training? That these are "majors" at all is disturbing. Anybody spending money to graduate with degrees like this should accept that they are gifts to themselves.

 

[kyuuei]

I read this this morning as well and posted it on my blog. It's pretty disheartening, since many of my friends are gunning for the education field. It's the good-old sacrifice what you love for money scenario if they go for anything else..

.. I think now-a-days, it's all about getting as much education as you can for as little pay-out as possible as fast as you can. Truly, college is no longer based on education, and I feel really bad for educators that genuinely want to spread knowledge put that above business in today's world.. because the facilities, the students, and their co-workers all treat it as a business market, not a place of growth and development. An environment like that could swallow your desire whole, and never bother to spit it out.

 

[stringstheory]

Srsly.
Recreation & Leisure? Athletic Training? That these are "majors" at all is disturbing. Anybody spending money to graduate with degrees like this should accept that they are gifts to themselves.

while that might be true, it disturbs me that there's a lot of stuff on that list i'd consider valuable to the community (AKA providing a service to others). Social work, education/special education, Nutrition, Child & Family studies...anything that has potential to help people (especially children). Even intellectual or cultural pursuits like Theology, Music/Art are discouraged, you could say, according to the way we pay them. i'm actually surprised Philosophy didn't make the list.

maybe i'm biased because i plan on doing social work. I don't know; but i think it says a lot about the priorities in this country, that some of the people who might be dedicating their careers and their lives to serving or progressing the community and this country are some of the least paid.

also, i'm assuming that these are B.A.'s? i know that someone with a MSW, for example, has a lot more earning potential than what's listed under social worker.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I think it does reflect on our culture that aesthetics and assistance of others are the least paid. It's sort of the GDP mindset. There are a lot of things that make life better, that are ignored because they don't have much of a positive impact current standard measurements.

I think salary is a pretty big deal in job satisfaction, but obviously that will differ a lot from person to person. I do think it's worth noting that the theoretical pay for such a degree does not account for your odds of getting the respective job, though.

I don't have the article on hand, but I read one that said that indeed, the worst paying degrees hardly or do not at all make up for their cost. For many degrees, including tons not on that list, it only amounts on average to several thousand more dollars over the span of 30 years.

 

[BRMC117]

Yea I don't make as much as the lowest paying job on there lol.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

Yea I don't make as much as the lowest paying job on there lol.

Because those are "careers", and most jobs aren't careers...

 

[BRMC117]

Because those are "careers", and most jobs aren't careers...

I know I was just saying

 

[proteanmix]

With some of those fields you have to get a bit more discerning. I'm in Education, but I do Adult Education, Continuing Professional Education, eLearning, and ID/ED.

These particular aspects of Education did well even through the depression. People can't afford to go to a brick building to go to school or they have to work so they go online. Also people continue to need to be certified to prove they know how to do what they say they do because so many don't. The need for these careers have steadily increased and are pretty well-payed even in your early career.

 

[INA]

while that might be true, it disturbs me that there's a lot of stuff on that list i'd consider valuable to the community. Even intellectual or cultural pursuits like Theology, Music/Art are discouraged, you could say, according to the way we pay them. i'm actually surprised Philosophy didn't make the list.

maybe i'm biased because i plan on doing social work. I don't know; but i think it says a lot about the priorities in this country, that some of the people who might be dedicating their careers and their lives to serving or progressing the community and this country are some of the least paid.

Sure, it seems to discourage more theologists, artists and musicians, but the flip side is that it's encouraging more mathematically-inclined studies. And I'm not so sure that what it is encouraging is not as "helpful" to people.
Math and science education in the U.S. is wanting. What's alarming from this article is the prospect of discouraging pay for teaching these subjects, which are in demand and bring higher salaries, and, imho, have greater social utility than another theology teacher.

Perhaps the philosophy majors end up pursuing more profitable jobs. Then again, I also tend to decouple valuable from "well-remunerated." i chose my arguably impractical (yet very valuable to me) college major knowing that it wasn't going to bring in the money and doubled it with something more practical.