Специальности с лучшей и худшей окупаемостью: сравнение долгов и зарплат выпускников

Bachelor’s Degrees With the Best and Worst ROI: How College Majors Compare on Debt and Salary KEY TAKEAWAYS - Computer science majors had the highest return on investment, earning almost $35,000 more annually than the typical major. - Theology and religion majors had the lowest ROI but a lower unemployment rate than many other majors. - Recent college graduates face rising unemployment rates, with some majors experiencing higher-than-average unemployment. Attaining a bachelor’s degree can be expensive, and many students take on the risk of borrowing to afford one. Some majors will provide most of their graduates with a better return on their investment than others. Return on investment (ROI) measures the net gain from an investment relative to its cost. There are many other factors to consider when choosing a major. This ranking is a model to help illustrate the wages college graduates can earn relative to the debt they incur for their major. College doesn’t work out financially for everyone. Some graduates, especially those who didn’t receive financial aid, had high tuition costs or took more than four years to earn a bachelor’s degree, and tended to have a lower ROI. However, all the majors Investopedia calculated had a positive ROI despite the student loan debt many take on, and the median graduate in all fields of study earned more in their early career than the median worker without a bachelor’s degree or higher. Why This Matters Higher pay and lower debt shape how easily graduates can cover their spending, both essential and discretionary, and how fast they can pay off their loans. The median debt across the college majors analyzed is over $24,700 in student loans, according to Investopedia calculations using data from the Education Data Initiative. The median early career salary across the majors analyzed was $52,000, according to Investopedia calculations using New York Federal Reserve data. Compared with the median college graduate, graduates in the major with the worst ROI, theology and religion, tend to take on more debt, about $34,800, and earn less, about $41,600 annually. The median theology and religion graduate achieved an ROI of 828% 10 years after graduation. Advertisement By contrast, computer science had the highest ROI of any major, about 3,143%. Computer science majors generally borrowed almost $1,600 less than the median college graduate. They also earned about $35,000 more annually in their early career than the median graduate. Unemployment Hits Recent College Grads Hard College graduates have struggled to break into the labor market over the past few years. Experts blame the introduction of AI for taking over entry-level jobs and employers’ reticence to hire recent college grads for remote jobs for worsening unemployment rates. The median unemployment rate for recent college graduates in January 2024 was 4.4%. As of March 2026, the median unemployment rate for this group has risen to 5.6%. Unemployment rates vary by major, and graduates in some fields find work far more easily than in others. The unemployment rate for recent computer science graduates in 2024 was 7%, about 2.6 percentage points higher than that of all recent college graduates in the same year. Meanwhile, theology and religion majors had the lowest ROI; these graduates had an easier time finding a job, with an unemployment rate of 3.1% in 2024. The major with the lowest unemployment rate was special education, which had the ninth-lowest ROI, almost 1,380%. The highest unemployment rate, 7.9%, was for anthropology majors, who earned an ROI of about 1,622%. Methodology To determine the ROI for different college majors, Investopedia used the median student loan debt per bachelor’s program, as calculated by the Education Data Initiative, as the cost of a college degree. The gain is calculated as the income a college graduate would receive after 10 years, using the median early-career yearly income for each bachelor’s degree type from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Read the original article on Investopedia