Best and Worst Liberal Arts Majors for Your Career

Liberal arts studies, in general, get a bad rap when it comes to career utility. But the rumors are only partly true. Yes, the median annual income for liberal arts majors is about 8% less than it is for all majors, according to Emsi, a labor-market research firm owned by Strada Education. And STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) are well represented among our rankings for best college majors for a lucrative career, which are based on demand and typical pay for workers with each degree.

But liberal arts majors are hardly destined for unending unemployment and empty bank accounts. In fact, their median income is more than a third greater than that of a worker with just a high school diploma, helping prove they are not such useless degrees after all. Indeed, plenty of employers highly value the skills learned from earning a liberal arts degrees, such as creative thinking, problem solving, critical analysis and communication. Even Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban told Bloomberg in 2017 that such skills will be increasingly prized in the job market. That's because, he said, as automation and artificial intelligence continues to absorb more work, businesses will look to their human employees to take on more thoughtful responsibilities, as well as more high-skill tasks. "I personally think there's going to be greater demand in 10 years for liberal arts majors than there are for programming majors and maybe even engineering," he said.

To determine which majors typically come with the best hiring prospects and