Is A Humanities Degree Worth It?
Nov 8, 2011
Yesterday I encountered a couple articles that questioned the value of going to college for a non-STEM (science, technology, engineering or mathematics) degree, both on a personal and societal level. Ignorning the societal questions, my girlfriend and I were curious about whether the claim that humanities or social science degrees aren’t valuable from a personal perspective was borne out in the data.
The one article that provided actual jobs data did so for 25-year-olds, which we felt was a particularly poor choice. If you graduate with a theatre or dance degree, for instance, at 25 there’s a very real chance you’re working a retail or food service job trying to make it in your chosen field, and that’s precisely what you want to be doing. Wage data from that time in a person’s life doesn’t accurately reflect the value of their education, because they’re likely actively ignoring higher-paying jobs because they lack the flexibility necessary to go to auditions and such. Similarly, those who chose to go to graduate school will skew the statistics by not really being in the workforce.
So, we decided to investigate the effect of educational field on income for people in their 40s, because we thought that would be a lot more representative of the long-term value of a college education. All the data comes from the American Community Survey, the Census’ annual survey of data about Americans. A lot of people don’t realize the actual original data points are available (under the name Public Use Microdata Sample), so you don’t have to use the Census’ pre-designed tables, you can develop whatever you want. A little Python scripting later and we had our data.
| Discipline | Level of education | Population | Average income |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | Below high school | 5434718 | $18090 |
| High school diploma | 25516044 | $33617 | |
| Art and Music Education | Bachelor's | 27864 | $37539 |
| Master's | 23202 | $58367 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 3711 | $70742 | |
| Visual and Performing Arts | Bachelor's | 8635 | $38013 |
| Master's | 3032 | $45554 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 1033 | $74062 | |
| Humanities | Bachelor's | 8780 | $43333 |
| Master's | 4591 | $58218 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 2280 | $99010 | |
| Psychology | Bachelor's | 257599 | $46728 |
| Master's | 164189 | $59540 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 73793 | $102719 | |
| French, German, Latin, and Other Common Foreign Language Studies | Bachelor's | 37437 | $47966 |
| Master's | 28739 | $61957 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 11750 | $99453 | |
| Social Science or History Teacher Education | Bachelor's | 13468 | $50386 |
| Master's | 10542 | $55242 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 2006 | $102029 | |
| English Language and Literature | Bachelor's | 200549 | $52416 |
| Master's | 109660 | $60264 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 58149 | $111871 | |
| Drama and Theater Arts | Bachelor's | 28539 | $56420 |
| Master's | 11629 | $51166 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 3996 | $83334 | |
| Journalism | Bachelor's | 91561 | $60368 |
| Master's | 22853 | $76829 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 9400 | $86307 | |
| Communications | Bachelor's | 247397 | $62189 |
| Master's | 53687 | $64217 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 14476 | $111432 | |
| History | Bachelor's | 115891 | $62315 |
| Master's | 64445 | $85218 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 54204 | $137564 | |
| Forestry | Bachelor's | 10254 | $62604 |
| Master's | 3436 | $71926 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 1046 | $133358 | |
| Physics | Bachelor's | 21442 | $72082 |
| Master's | 27825 | $102690 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 28437 | $122621 | |
| Accounting | Bachelor's | 466360 | $74335 |
| Master's | 106538 | $103953 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 32492 | $125672 | |
| Mathematics | Bachelor's | 77258 | $75037 |
| Master's | 57207 | $95204 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 19521 | $121534 | |
| Molecular Biology | Bachelor's | 2497 | $79029 |
| Master's | 1482 | $52335 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 4384 | $175559 | |
| Computer Science | Bachelor's | 235530 | $84217 |
| Master's | 76834 | $105486 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 11220 | $120176 | |
| Chemical Engineering | Bachelor's | 38051 | $89511 |
| Master's | 24422 | $116812 | |
| Professional or Doctorate | 12439 | $145061 |
The first rows show the data for people without at least a bachelor’s degree, broken out into those that have a high school diploma (or equivalent) and those that don’t. After that are rows by discipline of bachelor’s degree, sorted in ascending order of income for people who didn’t go on to an advanced degree. We picked a sampling of fields we thought would be representative, but there are more than 150 fields in the data set (see field FOD1P), so let me know if you’re interested in something in particular.
We were surprised to find that, in a few cases, there is only a small benefit to getting a bachelor’s. On average, the holder of a 4-year degree in Art and Music Education only earns $3900 more than someone without a 4-year degree, which is something, but not a lot compared to the many tens of thousands of dollars that the degree cost to obtain.
However, there are relatively few fields that are like that. Even stereotypically underutilized degrees like History, English, or Communications increase earnings by more than 50% by the time you’re in your 40s, though as expected, a STEM degree tends to be more valuable than a non-STEM degree.