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The most valuable college majors, ranked
Adrian D. Garcia
Bankrate
Sept 10, 2018

This article shows the 5 most valuable and 5 least valuable college majors. Salary and unemployment rates are shown. While the results are based on recent history and are not necessarily predictive of future salary and employment trends (which can change based on supply and demand)... the lists are interesting nonetheless. It is possible that the least valuable majors may be rather constant... while shifts in which majors are most valuable may show more fluctuation.
The Bankrate 2017 list of 10 most valuable college majors here.

Other sources of information include:
US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics (OES)
US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook OOH

Zoology is number two?

Incredibly, yes... zoologoy is ranked at number two although that college major shows a lower unemployment rate and a higher salary than actuarial science.

All information utilized in ranking the majors is not shown in the article... the article provides a link so that one can register and sign up to read further.

It's probably because zoologists are more likely than actuarial science majors to need a graduate degree for entry-level jobs.

Zoology is probably a common pre-veterinary track. So it being up there isn't any more surprising than Health and Medical Preparatory Programs. The fact that pre-law is in the bottom half is kind of surprising to me.

And the median pay (from BLS) for veterinarian is much more in line with the BankRate article than zoologist.

Here's a new working paper on STEM majors.

STEM Careers and Technological Change
by David J. Deming, Kadeem L. Noray - #25065 (ED EFG LS PR)
Abstract:
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) jobs are a key
contributor to economic growth and national competitiveness. Yet
STEM workers are perceived to be in short supply. This paper
shows that the "STEM shortage" phenomenon is explained by
technological change, which introduces new job tasks and makes
old ones obsolete. We find that the initially high economic
return to applied STEM degrees declines by more than 50 percent
in the first decade of working life. This coincides with a rapid
exit of college graduates from STEM occupations. Using detailed
job vacancy data, we show that STEM jobs changed especially
quickly over the last decade, leading to flatter age-earnings
profiles as the skills of older cohorts became obsolete. Our
findings highlight the importance of technology-specific skills
in explaining life-cycle returns to education, and show that STEM
jobs are the leading edge of technology diffusion in the labor
market.

(Quote)
"only 22 percent of actuarial science majors held a master’s degree or doctoral degree, suggesting the majority of graduates did not need to take on more schooling — which often comes with more debt — to find employment."
(End quote)

It's easy to assume that an advanced degree in any field is a wise move, not necessarily so as our family learned (and I suspected) involving our eldest son. I'd urge anyone to do their research as to the real value of any advanced degree before pursuing it. In my eldest son't case, all in academia encouraged him to pursue an advanced degree, however, research in his specific field of study and talking to those in the industry revealed that while the graduate degree would indeed pay a higher rate, it was minimal and would take about 30 or more years to recover the lost wages suffered from missing a couple of years of work if he would simply go into the work force with an under graduate degree and the additional cost of two additional years of college. The vast majority of companies were much more interested in work experience and professional credentials outside of college than an advanced degree.

Here is an article from the UK on this topic. Of course, the choice
of college major and career should not be guided solely by money.

The cost of studying the arts at Oxbridge
High-scoring students leave £500,000 on the table by eschewing economics
The Economist
January 26th 2019

...

Yet even though Oxbridge students can pretend to read “Ulysses” for years and still expect a decent salary, they end up paying a large opportunity cost by pursuing the arts. That is because employers reserve the highest starting wages for students who both attended a leading university and also studied a marketable subject. Cambridge creative-arts graduates earn £11,000 more at age 26 than do those from Wrexham Glyndwr University, whose arts alumni are the lowest-earning in Britain. In contrast, Cambridge economics graduates make £44,000 more than do those from the University of Salford, where the economics course is the country’s least remunerative.

Many gifted arts students would struggle to crunch numbers. But for those who can excel at both, the cost of sticking with the arts, in terms of forgone wages, is steep. Cambridge creative-arts students have a-level scores close to those of economics students at Warwick, but earn about half as much. That is tantamount to giving up an annuity worth £500,000.

Who can afford such indulgence? The answer is Oxbridge students, who often have rich parents. At most universities, students in courses that lead to high-paying jobs, such as economics and medicine, tend to come from wealthier families, partly because such applicants are more likely to have the examination scores necessary to be accepted. At Oxbridge, however, no such correlation exists. History and philosophy students there come from richer parts of Britain, on average, than their peers studying medicine do.