Database of Majors and Salaries Heats Up Debate Over Purpose of College

Launch My Career provides realistic information to students, but critics say it represents the corporatization of higher education.

(Photo: Tobin Rogers/Getty Images)

Jun 15, 2016· 4 MIN READ

Culture and education editor Liz Dwyer has written about race, parenting, and social justice for several national publications. She was previously education editor at Good.

The average recent college graduate with a psychology degree barely earns more than someone with a high school diploma. But as tuition rates rise and total student loan debt grows, what’s a prospective student who’s interested in psychology—or social work or art—to do?

“Don’t borrow $75,000 for a $30,000-a-year job. Don’t think you can become a social worker and drive a Mercedes. Don’t think that if you get a master’s in fine art that you will be moving out of your mother’s basement pretty soon,” Mark Schneider, vice president and institute fellow at American Institutes for Research, told TakePart.

Schneider is on a crusade to give students a realistic picture of what their employment prospects will be—and ensure they know what they’re getting into financially before they embark on a course of study. Last week in Denver, his team at the nonprofit group revealed Launch My Career, a free website they created with Gallup and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But critics of Launch My Career’s approach disagree with making such an explicit connection between college and employment—an argument that’s at the heart of disagreements about the purpose of college in the 21st century.

Launch My Career is “an excellent example of the corporatization of higher education,” Nikhil Goyal, an education activist and the author of Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice, wrote in an email to TakePart. “As opposed to producing free thinkers, the task of higher education has deviated to satisfying the needs of industry, corporations, and the capitalist global economy.”

The interactive website allows users to explore majors, higher education institutions, jobs, or a general industry. It includes information on programs at two- and four-year institutions and is designed for three audiences: high school juniors or seniors, college students who are changing their major, or “a 30-year-old person who is out in the world and needs a skill because they’re having a hard time meeting their bills, they’re bored with their job, or need a better job,” said Schneider. After a user inputs information on a desired major or job, the website reveals the return on investment—average first-year wages, the number of jobs available in that field, and the median earnings someone can expect to take home over 20 years.

Users can also input what kind of lifestyle they hope for: Do they want to own a home or rent an apartment? Do they want to get married or have children? Do they plan to take public transportation, or do they hope to drive a luxury car? Once that information is gathered, the website spits out a baseline amount that a graduate would need to earn to achieve that lifestyle.

“If you want students to understand what’s going on here, you need a metric that they can grasp: How long is it going to take me to get to the life that I want? Five years? Ten years? This degree is going to earn me like $500,000 more in the next 20 years over that degree. They can understand that,” said Schneider.

Goyal doesn’t have a problem with a database for students with information about jobs and majors. He’s concerned that “the site plainly links higher education to the workforce and earnings potential. Obviously, at a time where students are burdened with enormous student loan debt, they are looking for jobs that will help alleviate their economic situations, but the purpose of higher education is not to obtain a healthy return on investment,” he wrote.

Instead, colleges should “help raise the political consciousness of young people,” wrote Goyal. “We need individuals who will refuse to passively accept the unjust social order and work to radically change it.”

But the purpose of college, said Schneider, has come a long way from the days when universities educated a small number of elites in Latin and Greek. State legislatures investing heavily in public universities also want returns on their investments. “They want well-paid citizens. They want a talented workforce. One way or another, we have to deal with that,” Schneider said.

At the kickoff event for the website in Denver, Schneider said, he spoke to a young woman who was considering becoming a music major until she used Launch My Career.

The woman looked at the return on investment for music. “She said, ‘You know, I am the first person in my family to go to college. My parents have sacrificed an enormous amount for me to go. I have younger brothers and sisters, so I’m opening the way for them,’ ” Schneider recalled.

Then came the moment of reconsideration he hopes others who use Launch Your Career can reach. The young woman told Schneider, “If I major in music, these numbers tell me that I’m not going to be able to fulfill my obligations.”

The woman decided to minor in music and told Schneider she would choose a major that would have a greater return on investment.

“I think we want more people to think about that: What are your obligations? What are the things you need to do; what are the things you want to do? Can you really afford them if you’re majoring in early childhood education, the lowest-paid major?” said Schneider.

He acknowledged that some people who use Launch My Career could decide to avoid traditionally lower-salaried careers such as teaching. It also doesn’t take a viewing of the robot-like workers in the 1927 silent film Metropolis to know that a career you feel passionate about tends to be more satisfying.

“You have to follow your passions, but you also have to feed yourself and your family. So follow your passions, but be prepared never to reach your life goals,” Schneider said.

The website has only Colorado-specific data right now—for example, how much people who major in education and attend the University of Colorado Boulder will earn. Additional state-specific versions of Launch My Career will debut in Tennessee, Texas, and Minnesota in the next few months, and Schneider hopes students nationwide will eventually have access to it.

For the person deciding between a lucrative STEM major or studying a subject that leads to other traditionally low-paying fields, Goyal has some advice. “Our society needs critical thinkers, engaged citizens, activists, scholars, and public servants and we should be working to ensure that all jobs offer a decent living wage,” he wrote. “We need to examine these issues systematically, not just individual to individual.”