Which degrees give the best financial returns?

Humanities (English) graduate here. I&#x27;ll be honest: my education did help me understand the world better, but it left me completely and utterly unprepared for a role outside of academia.<p>Fortunately, I&#x27;ve had an entrepreneurial spirit and freelanced my way through college and through extensive self-study, built up a career in marketing.<p>But my college mates who weren&#x27;t as entrepreneurial, or didn&#x27;t have as much business sense are suffering. They&#x27;re working mostly dead end jobs or grinding away at the bottom end of academia. It&#x27;s not pretty.<p>I would caution anyone going for a humanities degree to think long and hard about their decision. If you&#x27;re not entrepreneurial, can&#x27;t hustle, and don&#x27;t pick up secondary skills (marketing, coding, sales, etc.), you&#x27;re going to have a hard, hard time.

One of the comments to the article makes the very valid point no control for sex is done, and Math&#x2F;CompSci&#x2F;Engineering degrees are much more male dominated.<p>Could this also be expanded to location? Salaries in high cost locations tend to be higher. Salaries, over 1 or 20 years, are not the same thing as take-home net of living and property costs. Are Math&#x2F;CompSci&#x2F;Engineering employment paths located in higher cost locations? I don&#x27;t know, but they could be.

One huge factor that this study apparently left out is that more prestigious universities can generally offer much better financial aid, and hence offer a much better ROI for middle and low income students.<p>MIT and Podunk U might have the same effect on your salary, but if MIT is charging you only $5,000 a year (including room &amp; board), it&#x27;s going to be an order of magnitude better ROI.

It seems that in America, there can be no education for education&#x27;s sake; post-secondary pursuit of knowledge has been so monetized that 18-year-olds are expected to see into the future and determine the earning prospects over their 50-year-career. If your interests are in less paying fields you are the target of constant derision.<p>These articles and charts change nothing. They merely allow the prized few whose talents and interests line up with the capitalist zeitgeist to pat themselves on the back and shun all those little people who dared to pursue their own genuine interest with their own life and their own money.

That which gives the highest financial return is unrelated to the degree. Political connections and charisma is what makes you the most financially successful.<p>Look at Carly Fiorina - sucks at running a business, but she&#x27;s rich because she&#x27;s connected and talks a lot. Same with a lot of CEOs and politicians.<p>It&#x27;s why many people go to big name schools like Harvard. Not because it&#x27;s a good school, there are many good schools, but because of the political connections one may make. If you live in Utah and plan to stay there, and you want political connections, you go to BYU, not Harvard, even if you qualify for a full ride at Harvard.<p>Speaking of which, there is definitely something in the water when it comes to BYU and political funny-business. And it ain&#x27;t ethics.

No argument with the premise or results. That said, if I were to advise a 16 yo self, I would include consideration for skilled trades. A plumber&#x2F;electrician&#x2F;hvac specialist with decent business&#x2F;accounting&#x2F;bookkeeping skills can pretty much write their own ticket past apprenticeship.

On the developer side I have seen studies showing those with less college actually make more than those with the most college education. Good programmers are self taught. It is in their blood. Getting a masters degree in computer science doesn&#x27;t guarantee you are a good developer. It isn&#x27;t a requirement or necessary like some other careers. It&#x27;s meaningless compared to on the job experience.<p>At my last startup, the first 3 developers, including myself, all lacked a college degree. We kicked butt and knocked it out of the park.

Good to hear that engineering is less dependent on institutional prestige. As someone who doesn&#x27;t attend a name-brand university, I hope to be evaluated more for my skills than for the school I went to.

It&#x27;s problematic looking at salaries college students vs. non-college students, as if the single choice of going to school or not makes the difference, and getting the degree assures the good pay. Too many recent graduates know better.<p>Obviously college students would make more than non-college. Just for the fact that supply and demand in the job market - less people will go further in their education and so the college grad, masters, PhD is going to be less supply.<p>Looking at salary as a return on investment of tuition however, that is shoddy. The very smart person will make more money (if they decide that is important to them), but not because they went to college - other personal characteristics will determine that.

Regardless of major, to move past a certain level, some knowledge of business fundamentals is necessary. Things like accounting, marketing, sales, management, finance, etc.

That list is missing &#x27;no degree&#x27;.

Which degrees give the best societal return? yay capitalism