This Is the Lowest Paying College Major in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 7, 8:30AM EST

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This Is the Lowest Paying College Major in America — © Rawpixel / iStock via Getty Images

Recently, many high school graduates have questioned whether they should go to college at all. Their math is simple. Few can pay the full amount to cover tuition, room and board, so they take out student loans. Recent research shows one in four Americans have student debt, with an average of just over $37,000. The Biden administration has stated it wants to forgive some of this debt. However, plans for this have not been finalized.

Against these tens of thousands of dollars of debt, students have to measure what they believe their future earnings will be. For some people, the paydown of the debt may not occur for years or even decades. This means it will be harder for some of them to buy homes. Even day-to-day expenses may have to be on strict budgets.

The major that college students choose can significantly affect their earnings power in the future, which, in turn can affect their ability to pay their debt. To determine the lowest-paying college major in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed Census Bureau data on average annual earnings of individuals holding an undergraduate degree in 2019. The disparities in incomes between majors paying the most and least are quite stark.

At the far end of the spectrum, the highest-paying college majors on our list are health and medical preparatory programs, pharmacology and computer engineering. The average annual earnings in these fields in 2019 were all significantly above $100,000. This reflects the value of an education in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields in particular.
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The lowest-paying majors include elementary education, library science and miscellaneous education, with average annual earnings no higher than $30,000

The lowest paying college major is elementary education. Here are the details:

Average annual earnings in 2019: $28,376
Unemployment rate in 2019: 1.4%
Total workforce in 2019: 1,391,273

To determine the lowest-paying college major in America, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data on earnings from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample files. Undergraduate college majors were ranked based on the average reported incomes of individuals holding the degree in 2019.

Data on unemployment rates and total workforce were calculated using data on employment status by field of degree from the same source. The Census Bureau considers the first degree listed by survey respondents in response to the prompt “Please print below the specific major(s) of any BACHELOR’S DEGREES this person has received” to be their major undergraduate field of degree.

Click here to see all the highest and lowest paying college majors in America.
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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.