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10 Worst-Paying College Majors 5 Years After Graduation: Is Your Degree Among Them?

July 4, 2025

3 min Read

Written by Nicole Spector

Edited by Zuri Anderson

One asian female student stands out from the crowd of graduating college students at UCLA.

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“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It’s a question kids are frequently asked, and one that usually elicits excited answers. Kids will say they want to be teachers, astronauts, veterinarians, doctors — the list goes on. You’ll hear all about why their dream job du jour is important and interesting.

Seldom, if ever, will you hear a child rattle on about the profitability of the career, or what unemployment rates look like in the field or whether the market is oversaturated with educated job candidates.

By the time high school rolls around, kids usually have a less fantastical and more hardened sense of a career’s viability. They may shut down the prospect of some college majors that appeal to them because the careers they lead to are typically low paying, if not on the verge of being totally obsolete.

Those kids — the ones who just say no to majors they may have once dreamed of pursuing — probably won’t be surprised by recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that found the careers with the lowest wages in one’s early earning years.

Also read about the top college majors with the highest mid-career salaries.