Higher education is often promoted as a path to higher earnings. It’s considered to be a critical way of narrowing the racial wealth gap. But not all paths through college lead to the same financial rewards. A new report by the Center of Law, Business, and Economics (CLBE) at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law examined the factors that can lead to radically different economic outcomes for college graduates—and came to some surprising conclusions.
The report used data from resumes and the National Science Foundation’s National Survey of College Graduates to probe at the relationships between the selectivity of the school that a student attends, the major that they select, and their future earnings. Although some of what they found was expected (students who attend more selective institutions tend to make more money, STEM jobs often pay more than others), some of what they found had unexpected implications for students trying to make difficult choices.
Deborah Weiss
The most popular college major in America is business administration. Often thought to lead to well-paying jobs, it attracts particularly high percentages of minority students. However, the report suggests that, at least at non-selective schools such as community colleges, business is not as profitable as it may seem. Business majors at non-selective schools earned less money on average than their classmates who focused on other subjects.
“It just came out looking awful,” said Deborah M. Weiss, director of the Workforce Science Project at the CLBE and one of the report’s authors. The earnings for business majors at more highly-selective schools were closer to average.
For students at non-selective schools looking for a more lucrative career, the report points to a different path.
“Nursing is an unbelievable major,” said Weiss. “If you’re cut out for it, it’s far and away the best-paid, least-risky major for people who are going to community college.” The research found that nursing majors from non-selective schools were making almost as much as those from highly-selective schools.
According to Weiss, this may have to do with the way the nursing field is structured.
