Best College Majors Led by Business and Computers

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 9, 6:34AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Graduate from college with a major in business or computer science and the odds are strong there will be a job waiting. Graduate with a degree in fine arts or graphic design and begin a search for a job that is less likely to be available. The conventional wisdom that a liberal arts education has the most modest value appears to prove itself more and more often.

According to new data from H&R Block, the “most in demand” majors are business (31%), computer and information sciences (24%), engineering (17%) and health professions and clinical sciences (10%). No other majors reach the double digits.

At the other end of the spectrum, based on unemployment rates for recent graduates, the majors are video and photographic arts (unemployment rates for recent graduates 12.9%), fine arts (12.6%), graphic design (11.8%) and philosophy and religious studies (10.8%).

Since unemployment among younger people has hovered at levels that still mirror national jobless rates from during the recession, it is a wonder that students would seek low employment majors at all.

ALSO READ: States That Spend the Most on Education

Of course, there is a fallacy in the idea that if all college graduates took degrees in business or computer sciences that jobs for them would be plentiful. At some level, the demand for these jobs gets completely satisfied. At that point, the attractiveness of these majors plunges. No one knows exactly where this tipping point starts.

On the other hand, students who enter college should know, or ought to be told, that for some majors, their four-year effort may not be rewarded, at least if they want to have jobs upon graduation. It is a bit of information they might find useful.

ALSO READ: Companies With the Least Valuable Workers

As the American economy becomes increasingly driven by technology and finance, the trend to plentiful jobs in those sectors likely will persist. It is too late for recent graduates to get value from that information. Perhaps people entering college today might be guided toward industries where they might actually find work.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.