Depressing and overwhelming? Absolutely. And the helpful people at Kiplingers want to do their part to make things just a little bit worse, by telling you which of your possible college majors is the most likely to leave you financially strapped.
Here’s Kiplinger’s 2012 Top Ten list of Worst College Majors For Your Career. You can follow the links on each item to read the depressing detail of why this choice is a downer.
10. English
9. Sociology
8. Drama and Theater Arts
7. Liberal Arts
6. Studio Arts
5. Graphic Design
4. Philosophy and Religious Studies
3. Film and Photography
2. Fine Arts
1. Anthropology
It’s a list worth studying if your only goal in going to college is to make a lot of money and get the best return on investment for your college tuition. However, that may not be the only goal worth maximizing. With the rare exception of a technical degree, engineering oriented or maybe a medical career, most people don’t use what they learned in college every day. In fact, many of the careers that exist today didn’t exist when the parents of today’s high school seniors were seniors themselves? How can today’s students guarantee that they will be best positioned for their second or third career 20, 30 or 40 years from now? Plus that intangible bonus of being happy?
If you have an answer, please get back to us. But don’t go searching for that secret in a place like Nyack; odds are that most of the accomplished professionals hanging out at Starbucks on the average afternoon have degrees in English, Theatre, Fine Arts or Graphic Design. Some of those English majors may even have day jobs writing for magazines telling high school seniors what majors not to choose.
See also: How To Be A College Freshman, 8/18/2012