The Value of Your Degree

I’ve posted about The Best Job in the World, according to a number of metrics. Now, a new study has been released, looking at the earnings of people who hold a bachelor’s degree.

Researchers at Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analyzed US Census Bureau data on over 3 million bachelor’s degree-holders who graduated over the last 40 years. Specifically, they recorded the median salaries they earned in 2009; this means that they took a cross-section of people currently in the workforce (it didn’t just look at people who graduated in 2009).

I’m sad to report that the field with the lowest median salary is Psychology and Social Work (P&SW) at $42K (range: $29K to $53K). Sob. Below is the breakdown within P&SW (from The Chronicle of Higher Education):

The lowest is counseling psychology, ringing in at a paltry $29,000 per year. At the top of P&SW is I/O psychology (those who work in large companies, measuring and improving performance and/or wellness). I guess those companies pay pretty well; the pay is almost double that of the poor counseling psychology graduates.

But wait--what are those lowly counseling psychology-degree-holders actually doing? They’re not working as counseling psychologists. Why not? Generally, you can’t, not with just a Bachelor’s degree. Maybe they just got their BA and are now working in retail. On the other hand, you can work in I/O psychology with “just” a bachelor’s degree.

Also, the US economy isn’t in great shape. The data came from 2009, when the job situation was pretty grim--not that it’s great today. It’s possible that some people had their salary cut, or at least not increased recently. Still, the numbers above are based on full-time, full-year workers with a Bachelor’s, not part-time workers.

Finally, those who hold higher-level degrees like a Master’s or Ph.D. earn more. According to the report, median earnings of those with a graduate degree in P&SW was $60K, moving P&SW up to the third-lowest field.

So, did you make a bad choice of major? Should you have taken engineering (overall median: $75,000)? Or computing science (overall median: $71,000). Maybe we’re just all in this for the love of it.

Why aren’t you studying?


Anonymous said...

I better end up liking Psychology a lot—like an additional fifteen thousand dollars worth of "like" each year.


God damn it.

Karsten A. Loepelmann said...

@Anonymous: Argh. Yeah, I didn't want this post to come across as negative, but it's hard to put a good spin on it.

Maybe this: I have a friend who graduated with a BSc (Psychology, minor in Math). He now has a low-stress, interesting job in IT, drives a nice car, and makes more money than me. He's not "doing psychology", but he wouldn't have been hired without a Bachelor's.

Anonymous said...

The moral of that story in Australia at least is keep studying for your masters or PHD in psychology then the wages look a lot more interesting.


- love your blog I go to it often for helpful hints in my degree. Might be a small bit of sea between us but your knowledge works just as well over here

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