While salary shouldn’t be your only consideration when choosing a college major, it’s certainly something that you should take into account when deciding how much you can afford to invest in a college education.
If you know you’re planning on entering one of these lower-paying fields, it may not make financial sense to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.
Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Just because a field has low starting salaries doesn’t mean there’s no room for growth. For example, Anthropology majors make an average of just $36,200 at the beginning of their careers, but jump to $61,400 by mid-career.
With college graduates entering a still-shaky economy, graduates’ salaries are becoming an increasingly important metric in the college ranking game. But is there too much of a focus on future pay and not enough on the quality of education colleges offer?