Survey Results 2 - Does College Major Matter?

As a Classics major, this question is very important to me personally, and I bet that a lot of other students out there are also wondering just how important their college major will be in their job application process.

So, to satisfy my need-to-know, I included a question about this in my survey:  “If you were hiring someone for a job not requiring a specific degree, how important is their major in your decision?”

I was surprised how drastic the results were!

Note: The question is NOT referring to positions requiring a specific degree or certification (e.g. doctor, lawyer, architect, teacher, brain surgeon, accountant, etc.)  However, if you want to do any of those jobs, you probably already know that you need a specific degree to get the job!

 

As you can easily see in the graph above, not many employers thought a job applicant’s degree was “critical” compared to the amount who thought it was “Somewhat Important” or less!   In a student’s first year out of college, in fact, only 9 survey respondents said that the student’s major was the most critical factor in their hiring decision.  Out of the 555 total respondents, only 200 considered a job applicant’s college major as more than “Somewhat Important” to be hired for a job in the applicant’s first year out of college!  Nearly as many (178) thought that a college major was “Somewhat Important” and 177 survey respondents thought that a college major was less than “Somewhat Important” in their hiring decision.

And that’s just for the first year out of college!

Once a job applicant was five years out of college, only 107 of the survey respondents thought that their college major was more than “Somewhat Important” and only 8 believed it to be more than “Important”.  Similarly, only 141 respondents thought a college major was more than “Somewhat Important” in their decision overall.  Only one final die-hard (0.0018%) continued to insist that a job applicant’s college major was “Critical” in their hiring decision.

The overwhelming majority, however, believed that, while college majors have some weight, the subject an applicant studied in college is definitely not the deciding factor in the hiring decision!!!

Phew!  Looks like I can stop having nightmares about spending the rest of my working life asking, “Would you like fries with that?”

Comments

[Morgan]

career development told me 75% of careers dont need a specific major. hmmm..