What Are You Going to Do With That?

By Beckie Supiano

For the first time, researchers analyze earnings based on 171 college majors

Tuition is rising, the job market is weak, and everyone seems to be debating the value of a college degree. But Anthony P. Carnevale thinks these arguments are missing an important point. Mr. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, has argued that talking about the bachelor’s degree in general doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because its financial payoff is heavily affected by what that degree is in and which college it is from.

Now, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau sheds light on one big piece of Mr. Carnevale’s assertion: the importance of the undergraduate major. In 2009, the American Community Survey, the tool the bureau uses to collect annual estimates of population characteristics, included a new question asking respondents with a bachelor’s degree to give their undergraduate major.

After combing through the data, Mr. Carnevale says, it’s clear: “It does matter what you major in.”

Continued at: http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-a-Degree-Worth-Report/127612/