Tuition costs have more than doubled at public colleges since the mid-1990s, and at private schools they’ve surged roughly three quarters over the same period. That context makes choosing a major feel less like a personal passion exercise and more like a high-stakes financial bet. For a growing number of students, that bet just isn’t paying off.
According to a recent NBC News poll, nearly two thirds of registered voters agreed that a four-year degree is “not worth the cost, because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.” The shift is sharpest when you look at specific fields. A troubling roughly one in four bachelor’s degree programs carries a negative return on investment, and for many others the payoff is only modest. These are the eleven degrees students increasingly say just don’t justify the bill.
1. Fine Arts
1. Fine Arts (Image Credits: Pexels)
Few fields capture the tension between passion and practicality quite like a fine arts degree. Society needs artists and musicians, but low earnings for these fields signal that supply and demand are seriously mismatched. Too many art majors chasing too few jobs that can use their skills is a recipe for low wages and negative financial returns.
Among recent graduates, anthropology tops the unemployment rankings, but fine arts graduates follow closely with an unemployment rate of roughly seven percent. Despite fields like fine arts often offering mid-career salaries around seventy thousand dollars, job security remains elusive. A 2025 graduate with a bachelor's in commercial art can expect to earn a lifetime total of around six point eight million dollars, with median earnings among graduates totaling under sixty thousand dollars annually.
2. Education (Bachelor's Level)
2. Education (Bachelor's Level) (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Teaching is one of the most socially vital professions, but the financial return on an education degree is consistently among the weakest of any field. A bachelor's in education offers the lowest lifetime return on investment of any degree tracked, representing a loss of over one hundred forty nine thousand dollars in degree-based earnings.
The wage benefits of a college degree differ considerably across majors. Graduates in computer science earned a median wage of roughly one hundred thirty thousand dollars annually in 2024, double what graduates in education made at sixty-five thousand dollars. That gap is hard to ignore when both students may have borrowed similar amounts to earn their degree. Teachers often face the added burden of paying for state licensure and continuing education out of their own pockets.
3. Anthropology
3. Anthropology (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Anthropology draws students curious about human culture, behavior, and prehistory. The coursework is often genuinely fascinating. The job market, less so. Among all major fields examined by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, anthropology majors face a staggering unemployment rate of nearly nine and a half percent, the highest on the list.
The St. Louis Fed reports that criminal justice, performing arts, and anthropology majors all rank among the highest for underemployment, meaning graduates working in jobs that don't require their degree at all. Anthropology specifically sits at roughly fifty-six percent underemployment. Anthropology graduates have an unemployment rate that is higher than or equal to workers aged twenty-two to twenty-seven without a college degree.
4. Liberal Arts and Humanities
4. Liberal Arts and Humanities (Image Credits: Pexels)
Liberal arts degrees are often defended for teaching critical thinking and communication skills, and that argument has real merit. But the financial picture is genuinely difficult to defend when tuition runs into six figures. Liberal arts and humanities degrees carry a lifetime return on investment of roughly negative forty-three percent, placing them among the worst financial performers of any bachelor's program.
English language, history, and liberal arts graduates typically earn between seventy thousand and seventy-seven thousand dollars at mid-career, while also struggling with unemployment rates ranging from about four and a half to over five percent. These numbers aren't catastrophic in isolation, but stacked against a hundred thousand dollars or more of student debt, the math gets uncomfortable fast. Associate degrees in liberal arts or general education, in particular, tend to produce no financial payoff at all.
5. Sociology
5. Sociology (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Sociology trains students to examine social systems, inequality, and human behavior at a structural level. It's intellectually rich territory. The career path after graduation, though, tends to be murky. Sociology graduates face an unemployment rate of around six point seven percent, and these degrees tend to offer mid-career salaries hovering at the lower end of the earnings spectrum around seventy thousand dollars.
Most sociology roles that pay well require a graduate degree, meaning the bachelor's functions largely as a stepping stone rather than a destination. Students who stop at the four-year mark often land in social services, administrative roles, or unrelated industries. Among all college graduates broadly, roughly one in four sees little return on investment, earning less than ten thousand dollars more annually than the median high school graduate.
6. Communications
6. Communications (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Communications is consistently one of the most popular majors in the country, and its broad appeal is also part of its problem. A degree in communications offers versatility in career options but often fails to provide a strong financial return immediately after graduation. The broad nature of the field can dilute the applicant pool, making it harder to secure well-paying positions without further specialization or experience.
A 2025 graduate with a bachelor's in communications can expect a lifetime total of around seven point two million dollars, with median earnings among workers aged twenty-five to sixty-four sitting at roughly sixty-eight thousand dollars. Communications majors earn about nine and a half percent less than the average bachelor's degree holder their age. Unemployment is also notably higher among recent communications graduates compared to all bachelor's degree holders aged twenty-five to twenty-nine.
7. Psychology (Bachelor's Level)
7. Psychology (Bachelor's Level) (Image Credits: Pexels)
Psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate majors in the United States. Students are drawn in by genuine fascination with human behavior, mental health, and research. The problem is that a bachelor's in psychology is rarely enough to work in the field you studied. Psychology is among the majors that usually deliver a smaller payoff or no financial payoff at all compared to professional degrees.
Most meaningful psychology careers, from licensed therapist to clinical researcher, require a master's degree or doctorate. That means students who stop at the undergraduate level often end up in sales, human resources, or customer-facing roles that don't require any specific degree. For master's degrees overall, the portion of increased earnings that goes toward student loan payments jumps to roughly fifty-seven percent, representing a substantial financial drag for those who do continue.
8. History
8. History (Image Credits: Pexels)
History majors develop strong research, writing, and analytical skills. Employers frequently say they value these abilities. What they tend not to do is pay a premium for a history degree specifically. History offers limited direct job paths, with many graduates going into teaching or administrative roles that require additional certifications. Underemployment sits at roughly fifty percent, with early-career salaries modest at around forty thousand dollars.
The gap between the degree's intellectual prestige and its marketplace reality is stark. Graduate school is the most common route for those who want to actually work as historians, but that means adding several more years of tuition and delayed income to a degree that already showed weak returns. Taking additional time to finish any degree adds considerably to the cost, not just in tuition but in opportunity costs, since a student who starts their career later misses out on years of working experience and can end up earning less over their lifetime.
9. Culinary Arts
9. Culinary Arts (Image Credits: Pexels)
Passion for food and cooking is a legitimate career foundation, but paying forty or fifty thousand dollars per year at a culinary institute for skills that can also be learned through apprenticeship or on-the-job training is a hard investment to justify. A culinary arts degree, while passion-driven and creative, often leads to careers with low starting salaries and limited upward mobility. Graduates typically face steep initial tuition fees with median earnings far below those of other professions, and the industry's competitive nature means many find themselves in positions with little job security or benefits.
Professional kitchens are hierarchical environments where hands-on experience and reputation carry more weight than credentials. Many successful chefs built their careers without ever setting foot in a culinary school. The degree's value largely depends on the specific institution and the network it provides, making it one of the more inconsistent returns in higher education.
10. Theology and Religious Studies
10. Theology and Religious Studies (Image Credits: Pexels)
Theology and religious studies programs attract students with deep convictions and a genuine desire to understand faith, ethics, and human meaning. Those are worthy pursuits. They're just not particularly lucrative ones. College graduates with a theology and religion major generally have the lowest return on their investment when comparing their student debt versus their wages after ten years.
The college degree with the lowest recorded return on investment by one measure is a theology and religion major. The median student loan borrowing amount for these graduates sits at around thirty-nine thousand dollars, and after paying off that debt over a decade, a theology and religion major would earn a total profit of roughly four hundred forty-two thousand dollars from their degree. That sounds substantial until you compare it to fields like computer science, where the ten-year profit is more than twice as high. Career paths are also narrow, typically confined to ministry, chaplaincy, or academic roles that often require postgraduate credentials.
11. Fashion Design
11. Fashion Design (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Fashion design degrees are genuinely glamorous on paper, and the industry itself is one of the most culturally visible in the world. Getting a foothold in it, though, is a different matter entirely. Fashion design is known for its creativity, but it offers limited job opportunities, especially for newcomers. Graduates often face highly competitive job markets in major cities where the cost of living can be prohibitive, and the unpredictable nature of fashion trends means career longevity can be uncertain.
The return on investment for a fashion degree is further diminished by the high cost of specialized materials and the ongoing need for professional development to stay relevant. Aspiring designers must be prepared for the challenges of turning a fashion degree into a profitable career. Many graduates spend years in poorly paid assistant roles or pivot entirely into styling, retail buying, or marketing, fields that rarely require the specific degree they earned. The prestige of the diploma rarely translates into early financial security.
None of these degrees are without value in the broader human sense. Critical thinking, cultural understanding, and creative ability are genuinely important. The real issue is whether students are getting a fair exchange for what they're being asked to pay. Only about one in five Americans believe that college is worth the cost if the person has to take out student loans, while nearly half say it's worth it only without loans. That skepticism isn't irrational. With the average annual cost of college sitting at around thirty-eight thousand dollars, these decisions carry real weight and should not be taken lightly. Choosing a major isn't just about what you love. It's about what the market will actually pay you to do with it.