Picking a major is one of the most difficult choices a student has to make. And once you choose a major, it seems that you are in constant competition with other students over who has the hardest or the most important major — when in reality, it doesn’t even matter.
Science, technology, engineering, and math are not my personal strong suits, so majoring in a STEM subject would be counterproductive for me. I thrive when analyzing history and writing research papers, so mass communication was the obvious choice for my major. Many of my close friends can solve math problems in under a minute and can explain each step, but if you were to ask them to write a history paper, they would curl up in a corner and cry. Arguing over which majors are “harder” is pointless when it is really dependent on the student and their personal strengths and weaknesses.
However, if we were going to compare majors, a good place to start is with the workload. According to the National Survey of Student Engagement, engineering majors study an average of 19 hours per week, putting them at the top of the list. Arts and humanities spend about 18 hours studying per week, and communications, media and public relations majors spend about 15 hours per week. In this race, the STEM majors come out on top but not by a landslide.
Another comparison is the availability of work in each field after graduation. Topping this list is computer science, marketing, and nursing. Communications, arts, and humanities are not even in the top 10. While STEM majors may have heavier workloads while in school, after they finish their studies they are much more likely to receive a job without any experience in their field. When you major in fields like public relations, music, studio arts, or communications, you need to be good at what you do when you graduate and gain as much experience as possible during your time at school in order to get a good job after college.
When it comes to salaries, which many people consider to be the highest measure of the quality of your major, humanities fare well by helping graduates build skills that are desirable to employers. Engineering, history-related degrees, business administration and communications also rank as high-paid majors, according to 2019 data. So, even though we compare the difficulty or importance of our majors, employers are willing to pay us all high amounts for our expertise in our field.
No matter what field you’re in, you will have to work hard and spend lots of time studying if you want to do well. Attending graduate school, gaining experience in your field and making connections with professors and future employers, no matter your major, is difficult.
Across the board, attending graduate school makes you more likely to get a stable, well-paying job. Regardless of your field of study, you need to work hard to get accepted into a post-graduate program. You can be a STEM major, but spend little to no time studying and be less successful than a vocal performance major or a history major who works hard and perfects their craft.
While arguing over the difficulty and importance of our majors can be fun, when it comes down to it, your own personal work ethic, strengths, and weakness are what really determine your success.
Mia Coco is a 19-year-old political communication student from Alexandria.