As tuition costs surge and a strong labor market offers promising pay, there is a growing belief among some that a college degree is no longer worth the cost. Students and families alike may be asking if a bachelor’s degree from the University increases a student’s marketability and predicts a higher salary than their peers who chose an alternative career route.
The College Scorecard — a resource managed by the U.S. Department of Education — offers an answer to this question in the form of a breakdown by median earnings and student loan debt after graduation for 68 fields of study at the University. The scorecard offers similar breakdowns on earnings and debt for 5546 colleges in total. The scorecard suggests that some degrees are worth significantly more than others, and it also allows users to compare the value of a University degree to other accredited colleges. The resource’s most recent data is five years old.
In comparison to the other over 3,000 four-year colleges for which data was collected on earnings and debt post-graduation, the University’s median earnings are higher — the University’s median earnings are $86,863, as compared to the midpoint for four-year colleges, which is $53,727.
According to the data on the Scorecard amassed from University graduates, bachelor’s degrees in computer science and mathematics offer the highest salaries — median earnings following graduation fall between approximately $130,000 and $160,000. In contrast, bachelor’s degrees in anthropology, fine and studio arts produce graduates with the lowest earnings right out of college — graduates from these programs make about $45,000 to $55,000, on average.
According to Preston Cooper, higher education researcher and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, students attend college with the promise of a secured return on investment in the back of their minds. Cooper’s work includes quantitatively assessing the value of a degree by calculating ROI through looking at earnings compared to average debt accrued.
He said that although many prospective students also value learning for its own sake and forming friendships — alternative lessons that the college experience imparts — they most prominently expect a payout in the form of higher placement in the job market.
“If you ask college students, what are your reasons for going to college? They'll say some variation of, ‘I want to get a better job. I want to increase my earnings. I want to make myself more marketable,’” Cooper said.
Batten Prof. Sarah Turner researches higher education and said that there is more to life than how much you earn right out of college, but that one must balance in tandem the idea that finding gainful employment remains a strong objective. Turner advocates for maintaining a balance of seeking college as both a well-rounded experience and a useful tool to generate hireable traits.
“My take is that skills that employers look for among U.Va. grads are tied to capacity to solve complex problems and adapt, not indicators of whether you code in a particular language,” Turner wrote in a statement to The Cavalier Daily.
While Cooper acknowledged the significance of balance, he also vouched for the importance of tactfully choosing one’s college major — according to his research, one in four college degrees has a negative ROI and are not worth it. Cooper said that fields like engineering, computer science and business tend to have a high ROI and students of these majors can earn back the cost of their education without issue. This is less of the case for other degrees, he said.
“Fine arts, education, philosophy, history, humanities … certainly people do get a good return on investment with those degrees, but the return is less guaranteed,” Cooper said. “With those majors, you’re often facing much more of a coin flip … It’s sometimes not enough to earn back the cost of the education.”
However, according to Ira Bashkow, associate professor and director of the undergraduate program in anthropology, the anthropology major, which is rated among the worst ROI at the University, differs from skill-oriented majors such as accounting because the field is much more diverse, and students take their knowledge in different directions.
Instead of immediately entering a specialized career post-grad after completing a degree in a specific skill, his students pursue many different directions, including teaching, medical school, public health and law school.
“[It] is generally true that our students don't go straight into a middle-aged career from college, which I think is overrated, actually,” Bashkow said. “It’s okay to be young and explore things when you're young, and later you can be middle-aged when you're middle-aged.”
Bashkow said that changes in the landscape of post-graduate trends are due in part to increased worries among students which have pressured them to get started in their careers earlier and specialize as soon as possible.
“Young people are under more pressure than they should be to feel like they need to have a plan that leads from now to retirement, when they're, like, 20,” Bashkow said. “It comes from the culture — there's a lot of anxiety — and it comes from people constantly asking one another, ‘Oh, what are you doing next?’”
Second-year College student Francis Aiken is majoring in Behavioral Neuroscience, said she chose her major because it prepares her for future success in medical school and ultimately becoming a doctor. According to Aiken, the University does offer majors that lead to more difficulty after graduation in finding a job and success in one’s career. She gave the media studies major as an example of a degree she believes does not ensure students a solid ROI.
According to Bashkow, many of the people he knows who are happiest have changed directions many times over the course of their career. Some of the people he knows who entered bona fide careers out of college became very unhappy, and they ultimately changed directions.
He said another change to the landscape of the post-grad job market is the introduction of artificial intelligence — with the new technology, some traditional career pathways are crumbling or rapidly transforming, and he expects more profound changes in graduates’ plans are to come in response to this drastic shift.
While Bashkow said he was wary a degree in a subject like computer science could remain lucrative with time, Cooper said students with these degrees are also gaining a marketable skill set that could be adaptable to the new world of AI. Cooper’s advice to students is to be aware of labor market trends and the skills in demand to adjust one’s courses accordingly.
Second-year College student Yeeva Chunnanond studies computer science, and before arriving on Grounds, she had planned to major in this subject. Chunnanond said that she also hopes to complete a major in philosophy and appreciates getting a liberal arts education alongside her engineering-oriented degree.
After completing her degree, Chunnanond hopes to go into cybersecurity, and said that her University experience has been conducive to connecting her with real-world opportunities to prepare her for jobs after graduating.
Overall, Bashkow made the case for college centering on the experience and the qualitative skills one learns. Pushing one’s limits, adjusting to life’s surprises, exploring new courses and exposure to new ideas are all invaluable lessons one learns at college, and the more specialized skills required for one’s specific career are easy to learn on the job.
Second-year College student Eloise Diffley intends to study art history and government, and she said that a college name — in this case, the University — gives the degree its value more than a student’s major.
“The U.Va. name carries a lot of weight in the professional world, and I think that people have a certain perception of you based on where you went to college,” Diffley said. “A U.Va. degree immediately sends the message that you are driven and smart and have a strong work ethic, and I think that that alone is a strong enough return on its investment.”
For University students considering supplementing their degree with a master’s degree, Cooper said that these programs are “extremely risky propositions” — roughly 23 percent of bachelor’s degrees fail to pay off, and about 43 percent of master’s degrees fail to pay off.
According to Cooper, masters programs have high tuition and are not teaching skills that enable students to get better jobs. Cooper advised seeking a master’s degree only after working in one’s field for many years and ensuring that the education is vital for a promotion or higher salary.
Cooper said that his research showed that the increase in salary from a master’s degree relative to someone in the same field with just a bachelor’s degree is small.
According to the Scorecard, master’s degrees that are business-related typically have the largest salary increases in comparison to their business bachelor’s degree counterpart. A Master’s degree in business administration, management and operation has an average salary of $233,655 — an approximately $103,000 difference than a bachelor’s in general business —- and a general business Master’s degree has an average salary of $159,466 — $29,000 higher than the corresponding bachelor’s degree.
However, master’s degrees in subjects like psychology, public health and kinesiology do not have substantial salary benefits — all are less than a $2,500 raise, with kinesiology data showing about a $10,000 drop in median salary.
Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce publishes projections of jobs, education and training requirements through 2031. According to the resource, by 2031, 72 percent of jobs in the US will require postsecondary education and/or training, and 42 percent of jobs will require at least a bachelor’s degree, up from 36 percent in 2021. In 1983, less than 20 percent of jobs required at least a bachelor’s degree.
Cooper said he believes the government has the right to step in and enforce standards for degrees. Recently, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, enacted the policy that for an undergraduate program to receive federal loans, former students must have higher median earnings than high school graduates. Cooper said that this ensures that the worst ROIs can no longer use federal student loans going forward, which he believes is a reasonable change.
The bill also capped loans to graduate students — most graduate students will be capped at borrowing $20,500, or $50,000 for professional programs like medical and law school.
When considering the tradeoff between the inherent value of learning and experiencing college and a quantitative ROI, Cooper said that ultimately, if colleges are not delivering on positioning students to get better jobs, fewer and fewer students will choose to attend college.
“I do think that schools need to start actively considering what is their actual value proposition,” Cooper said. “Maybe that means closing some programs, but maybe that also means revamping programs to make them a bit more relevant to today’s labor markets. Maybe that means trying to increase graduation rates or lower tuition.”
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