Top 10 Most Regretted College Majors

I was a nursing major when I entered college but ultimately dropped that because I am not compatible with that career. I did go to trade school for medical assistant and got a job ASAP even if the job itself was without a degree and had a pay cap. My ex went for a humanities degree and I just... I can't be with a man that thinks humanities degree will be enough to support a couple. I don't want kids so even without kids in the picture. I am thinking of re-entering schooling for a data analyst path.

The elephant in the room for all this hand-wringing about degree choice is the fact that companies haven't wanted to invest in new employees and training for decades; the most regretted degrees are regretted because they're not instantaneously profitable and require a period of development, which almost no employers are willing to provide these days. They want their employees ready to be inserted on the factory line with no investment - this is why STEM is "preferred" because it comes with a very obvious-although quickly obsolete in terms of technology-skill set.

Someone who graduated summa cum laude from a liberal arts program could be just as bright as STEM major and trained to do just about anything that's not super high tech - this is how the economy used to work. English and History majors used to end up in banks or marketing, because they were smart, problem solvers, and had good writing skills. Companies recognized this, and the degree was taken as proof of their intelligence and ability to learn, not the job training itself, which the company was socially obligated and expected to provide.

Not so anymore. If you want to get anywhere with a non-STEM degree, you either need good connections to get you a job, or family wealth to support you through an unpaid internship that maybe, eventually, will get you hired. Unpaid internships have essentially replaced entry level work in liberal arts career fields, and closed the gates to everyone who wasn't already privileged or extremely lucky.

TLDR: There's no bad majors, only bad socio-economic management which places too much emphasis on short term gains.

Lol. I went into a trade out of high school and all the apprentices who weren’t right out of high school all had university degrees they couldn’t get jobs with. The number one degree ppl failed at life with was environmental science.

i’m a psych major but i want to do speech therapy. honestly everyone wants to do clinical psych and listening to people’s problems seem draining

I'm very happy with my education degree. If you manage to find a supportive school with good resources the hours and conditions are really decent (plus love the school holidays with my kids). It can be challenging but also rewarding. Although teachers are well paid in Australia so maybe I wouldn't be so happy in the US. Currently studying my Masters in School Counselling which, if I manage to break into, is VERY well paid here (on par with doctors & dentists). Only other field I wish I studied is social work. Planning on studying it in the future, perhaps. Although tbh the pay and conditions are worse than teaching so it might not be the best strategy 😂. Sometimes I fantasise about becoming a midwife as I think pregnancy & birth are such powerful female experiences but I don't think I'm suited to providing medical care 😬

Meh - not every girl dreams of becoming a computer tech, HR rep, or nurse. Some of us want to become journalists, writers, artists, educators, and biologists. A career is more than a paycheque and while the latter are not as easy turn-key job positions as the former, you have to play to your strengths and pursue your dreams. I have degrees in both STEM and humanities/ social science, and I enjoyed both immensely - and I wouldn’t undervalue the critical thinking skills I learned in the humanities for the technical skills I learned in STEM. Ultimately you have to decide which career is right for you and whether a university degree in that field will help you get there, along with the social hustle, luck, and hard work that any ambition requires.

Engineering is a FANTASTIC degree. I work for an electric engineering company and they’re in great demand. I make good money in communications but most of my peers don’t. If I had it to do over I’d be an engineer.

As someone who studied something very close to the "regretted degrees" (I'll leave my exact field vague since it is really small and I don't want to get doxxed), stayed and makes really good money now and doesn't regret it, I would say it isn't that simple.

Let me start by saying that I hate the whole "All disciplines that aren't STEM are useless, badly paid and sooooo easy" thing and I am pretty sad to read it here as well. As someone who has looked into both as a student and has taught one on an academic level let me tell you that this is 100% untrue. Really. I have seen people with amazing grades in their STEM studies being completely overwhelmed in my supposedly "easier" field and fail out. I have seen people with average liberal arts degrees suddenly get amazing grades in a STEM major. There is no "harder" or "easier" here and saying so perpetuates cliches that keep women out of STEM majors because they consider them "harder". Of course different people have different aptitudes and talents and someone with a talent in languages but who was never a great mathematician will do great in a discipline that requires them to learn a lot of languages and may do worse in a field that requires a lot of maths. Duh. That doesn't mean that the language related field is easier.

My most important advice for NOT regretting studying in these fields is:

1) Have a plan what to do with the degree before you start. Never, ever go the "I didn't know what else to study and art history sounded fun because I like paintings" route. If you want to study art history have a goal to work towards. Do you want to stay in academia and become a professor? Tailor your studies to that. Do you want to be a curator? Fine, tailor your studies and internships to that. Do you want to work in insurance? Tailor your studies and internships to that. And so on. I have a friend with an art history degree who works for a big insurance company now and appraises and handles the art insurance cases. She makes tons of money there.

2) Do not study a discipline like that if you don't have the potential and talent to be in the top 5%. I know it sounds harsh. An average or just pretty good engineer will still find a decently paid job in his or her field pretty easily. An average or just pretty good journalist will be a taxi driver sooner or later and should have pursued journalism as a hobby to begin with. If you are not excellent and willing to sacrifice a lot to pursue that career, don't. It will not work and you will end up with a lot of debt and really unhappy.

3) Understand that the deck is stacked against you and everything will be a lot harder if you do not have large savings, rich parents who support you or already existing contacts in the field (e.g. through family). It will get almost impossible if you can't devote 100% of your time to it because you have kids or other obligations that also need your attention. To get the great jobs you will need to network, do unpaid internships en masse, get through times when you have no income because you are waiting for your next funding application to go through, do a lot of unpaid overtime and move a lot, especially in your early career. If you can't afford or do that, the people who can afford and do it will get the jobs even if your work is better. This is not a meritocracy, as unfair as that sounds.

4) Branch out. Do not just focus in your field alone but try to get certificates, experience etc. in skills that are more universally applicable (e.g. accounting, project managment, coding etc.). It will make a world of a difference when you apply somewhere, even if you stay in your field. Even an art historian doesn't just look at art all day. They have to do much more, like manage projects, employees and funds. Experience in that will be invaluable.

Ehhhh I am a nurse and I wish I did engineering or accounting. I don’t want to say where I work, but I managed to avoid the complete shit show of the hospital. Some issues are that even though I managed to find a M-F 8-5ish job, I have to drive a lot, deal with medical situations in which my decisions impact others, and end up in a lot of crazy situations. If I could go back, engineers and accountants work in offices and enjoy regular hours. I would aim for a nice government job with good benefits and just stay there until I can retire and do something like be an Instagram influencer on the side.

Don’t become a nurse no matter what this says. This job is so abusive, I’ve literally had coworkers kill themselves. No paycheque is worth your mental well being.

I definitely regret my English degree. Unless you know for sure that you want to be a teacher or professor, or if you have the means to get into publishing, it's not the best degree for having a good income. Yes, it helps with writing and communication skills, but just because you love books and reading doesn't mean you need to go into thousands of dollars of debt and study literature. When I went to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was very traumatized from some experiences and struggling in my life. If I could go back, I would have done done things differently. Now, I'm in a position where my degree is basically useless. I wish I had studied psychology because I want to be a therapist. I'm unsure how I'll be able to go back to school and make that happen, though.

It's sad how history has made the area of STEM so intimidating towards women and how often we feel we're not smart enough to make it, so we go for the Art/English/Education/Liberal Arts route despite the fact that we absolutely can make it in STEM. And in the off chance that science, technology, engineering, or mathematics doesn't tickle your fancy, there is always law, medicine, business and finance, or architecture/computer-generated design to look into.

It's not to say that women should all out ignore their hobbies and interests whether that's in the arts or creative writing or what have you, but I think a healthy moderate approach is to find a peaceful day job that makes a good amount of money to sustain you and to also give you the funds to work on your hobbies or "side passions".

Having a high salary keeps women out of poverty as well as keeping them away from domestic violence in general. They won't marry a man out of desperation, either.

I got a degree in engineering and am so glad I did. I make good money and have never once regretted my decision. I started making six figures by the time I was in my late 20's.

Young women who are wanting to go to college should really put more weight into their future salaries when deciding what to major in. The data in this post is so valuable! Engineering is a great career - low stress, good pay and I get to learn cool things. And here's a secret that men don't want you to know... it's actually not that hard! I notice when I tell women that I'm an engineer some of them say some version of "oooh I could never be smart enough to do that!".

Ladies, let me tell you that women can and are great at engineering, but on the other hand I have worked with male engineers who are as dumb as rocks! Don't be intimidated by male dominated ""smartie pants"" professions. We all already know that men are not that smart so why do we give the benefit to male engineers/scientists/programmers etc? Trust me when I say a lot of them aren't that smart either.

Sorry for the rant but my workplace is about 85% male and I will be on a lifelong crusade to get more women into engineering. Women engineers are wonderful to work with and we need more of them.

I'll end my rant by saying that feminism is about women gaining more power in the world. The harsh truth is that money = power in our society. I believe women making lots of money and being financially independent is a feminist act.

As someone who got a BA in Journalism and English and an MA in English and was a teacher… it’s a mixed bag. Here I am, a gifted white woman with lots of privilege but I’ve always felt economically oppressed. Journalism was a first love but there weren’t many jobs and I was married to first husband who liked his job and didn’t want to move. I should add that my older sister, older brother, and I were lucky enough to have a father who paid for our undergrad degree; he said if we wanted more education, we could pay for that. So I went back and got a MA in English and picked up 20 whole hours of teacher training. Couldn’t afford unpaid student teaching so went into a paid internship. Baptism by fire and I was exploited: first year teacher give three English classes, five issues of the student newspaper, and a 200 page yearbook. I had chest pains AND my first marriage was imploding. I happened to inherit low six figures in the mid 90s and got out of the Deep South. I had already met Jack, late second husband. He divorced then I did. I moved to Los Angeles in 97, started working and registering to become a teacher there. My salary from Louisiana to Los Angeles sextupled. I got a leg up and was able to get out. I married well and was taken care of and was left in very good financial terms. I also got to invest on my own and with my school district. Not everyone is this lucky. All this to say, there’s just so much I didn’t know. I was a snob about trades when younger because no one educated was in trades. Everyone in trades when I was growing up was super rough and coarse. Trades didn’t seem at all welcoming or safe for me as a woman. College seemed like the only real path and yet “it’s hard to be what you cannot see”. All those high-earning jobs didn’t have much female representation for my Gen X era. I’m glad things are changing.

Interesting to see that Art History or Animation/Illustration/Studio Art is not a regretted degree? Or does that fall under a liberal arts degree?

All of my artist friends regret the immense amount of money they paid or are still paying for their degrees.... Art school is such a ripoff (unless of course you get a full scholarship or parental ride, then go for it!) I try to impart this wisdom to young artists but they just won't hear it. 😞

Becoming the man you wanted to marry includes your education and career. The wrong man can take so much from you, but he can't take the education you've already received nor a career you've already built.

Makes sense. Most of those most regretted degrees are pretty useless or declining quickly in value (ie, you're not gonna get paid well or have a ton of options to leverage higher pay).

A liberal arts/general studies degree could be used as toilet paper.

Most of the least regretted are very valuable. I think basic coding should be a mandatory class in high school. And I'd recommend pretty much anybody consider Computer Science as a major in college.

That said, there is some overlap. A college degree in biology could lead into medicine, for example.