What the 1% majored in

Earthling · Jan 20, 2012

Hygro said:
Most of these majors are liberal arts, most are not engineering or other narrowly focused things.

Not a single one of the top five majors are what people are popularly referring to as "liberal arts." The issue in popular discussion or the media and the criticism that it seems you're attempting to rebuke is that people are getting degrees in large numbers in non-technical fields that are ineffective for future careers. We don't see, say sociology or education majors on this 1 percenter list. Meanwhile, nobody is counting science, medicine, law as "liberal arts" in the popular parlance, one would think they would certainly fall under your category of "narrowly focused things." It's not a surprise to anyone that large numbers of people in these profession are well payed. If your argument is that "liberal arts" leads to financial success because you define medical doctors, lawyers, and scientists as liberal arts majors that's pretty simplistic and doesn't really address anyone's criticisms.

The list of the top five includes economics and then various versions of biology and pre-med, which is essentially saying that people who go on to become medical doctors earn a lot of money.

The article you linked also really just references this fuller New York Times article.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/what-the-top-1-of-earners-majored-in/#

Also, note that in the full original article there's a caveat on what's even being surveyed in the main list - majors with "fewer than 50,000 people" are left out. This seems highly likely to be outright excluding many well paying technical fields like aerospace, petroleum engineering mentioned by others as examples.

edit - the New York Times article does link to data with a list of all majors, we can pull out more that would be in the top 10 of the "percent of majors who become part of the 1%" though these are under 50,000 in total numbers

Petroleum Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Genetics
Public Policy
Statistics
Neuroscience

So if not for being excluded in the main list for a fewer overall number of majors, these would be near the top, and only one is "liberal arts."

(There are more similarly excluded majors that would place above some of the majors on the list, those above would just all place in the top 10 of the presented list)

kochman · Jan 20, 2012

SS-18 ICBM said:
I wonder about the biology ones. They're in drug companies, aren't they?

Therein lay the problem with this stupid article... no clue... no accountability.

Earthling · Jan 21, 2012

kochman said:
Therein lay the problem with this stupid article... no clue... no accountability.

There's much more adequate information in the New York Times article. It doesn't and can't really address many confounding factors as there's no way to do so, like how many of the 1 percenters have inherited wealth.

From what is there the data really do seem to be pretty common sense, it's just nothing new to conclude. Again most of the very top majors in this ranking, besides economics, are essentially reflecting people who go to medical school and become medical doctors, or closely related fields, being more likely to make it to the 1%. Economics majors make it to the 1% fairly, and then the only other high "liberal arts" category with significant numbers of the 1% is "political science and government" and it's possible that's also reflecting a lot of people becoming lawyers.

Hygro said:
No, read closer, petroleum engineering got the spot for averaged highest paying major. These are the majors of the very wealthy. There's a key difference.

The list is not a list of majors of the very wealthy. As presented in the HuffPost article, what they took from the New York times is the ranked list of what percentage of people who had some major are in the 1%, excluding many majors (like the ones I found above) due to smaller total numbers.

A ranked list of the majors the 1% actually have, from the New York Times article's data, would be different. For instance, it would not have many of the majors listed here in the top 10-20, while majors not listed here like psychology, general business, and business management all make up fairly larger proportion of the "1 percenters."

I also tend to agree with Traitorfish that the "1%" thing is really more of a rhetorical device than something that is truly useful to measure like this.

Zelig · Jan 21, 2012

Hygro said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/what-the-1-majored-in_n_1215839.html#s621225&title=History

This is what I've been trying to tell people. Most of these majors are liberal arts, most are not engineering or other narrowly focused things. The main exceptions are the biology-related majors. Why would I, as someone who wants to do big things and perhaps as a consequence make big money, study engineering when I could study how the world works from many perspectives?

What I see is a sad state of affairs where engineers are getting far below their true worth.

RobAnybody · Jan 21, 2012

Earthling said:
A ranked list of the majors the 1% actually have, from the New York Times article's data, would be different. For instance, it would not have many of the majors listed here in the top 10-20, while majors not listed here like psychology, general business, and business management all make up fairly larger proportion of the "1 percenters."

Don't forget whatever Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Barry Bonds, Snooki, & Justin Bieber decided to write in for themselves.

Earthling · Jan 21, 2012

Yeah, there doesn't appear to be data on "no college degree at all."

Since the thread title implies the following is what the thread is actually about, here's the top 10 majors as a proportion of the 1% from the NYT's data:

Share of "1 percenters"

Biology - 6.6%
Economics - 5.4%
Business Management and Administration - 5.3%
General Business - 4.8%
Accounting - 4.7%
Political Science and Government - 4.7%
Psychology - 4.1%
English Language and Literature - 3.8%
History - 3.3%
Nursing - 2.9%

This of course doesn't show things like further degrees which would clearly be relevant, or many indications of social mobility but that data's not there anyway. Also, most of the 1 percenters will be reflecting degrees people got in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and so on, not degrees people are getting today. It would be a very bad guess to project that the numbers for the 1 percenters in the future would look the same as today. Though this list which is actually "what the 1% majored in" clearly doesn't show some of the odd stand outs that were the sensational point of the HuffPost, and has no arbitrary cutoffs by the overall number of majors. Intuitively, they all do happen to be fields with a large raw number of majors, not necessarily the highest rates of getting into the 1%.

GenMarshall · Jan 21, 2012

Yet these are the same 1%ers that say a LAs degree is useless :rolleyes:

.

GamezRule · Jan 21, 2012

Well, most athletes do actually have a college education nowadays.

amadeus · Jan 21, 2012

Japanese on there? Nope...

Spoiler :

Hehehe · Jan 21, 2012

Hygro said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/what-the-1-majored-in_n_1215839.html#s621225&title=History

This is what I've been trying to tell people. Most of these majors are liberal arts, most are not engineering or other narrowly focused things. The main exceptions are the biology-related majors. Why would I, as someone who wants to do big things and perhaps as a consequence make big money, study engineering when I could study how the world works from many perspectives?

That's an excellent point. Who needs "technology" (what's it good for anyway?) when you can study stuff like books, paintings and the English language?

Archbob · Jan 21, 2012

Hygro said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/what-the-1-majored-in_n_1215839.html#s621225&title=History

This is what I've been trying to tell people. Most of these majors are liberal arts, most are not engineering or other narrowly focused things. The main exceptions are the biology-related majors. Why would I, as someone who wants to do big things and perhaps as a consequence make big money, study engineering when I could study how the world works from many perspectives?

I don't count Economics as a "liberal art". When I went to college, it was still in business school. It looks like most of the majors are actually pure sciences.

Biology - 6.6%
Economics - 5.4%
Business Management and Administration - 5.3%
General Business - 4.8%
Accounting - 4.7%
Political Science and Government - 4.7%
Psychology - 4.1%
English Language and Literature - 3.8%
History - 3.3%
Nursing - 2.9%

It looks like the top half of that are definately not "liberal arts".

Mise · Jan 21, 2012

For the interested, here's the NYT data (which is in a stupid unsortable format at the bottom of the article that Huff Po references) in CSV format:

Spoiler :

Sadly the percentages in the NYT link are all rounded to 1dp, which is even more stupid because you can't group them up into more useful categories.

---

Anyway, it really wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people born into the top 1% of society could afford to do useless Liberal Arts degrees and still land a job in a top law firm or something on the basis of Daddy's recommendation. A lot of people can simply be thick as two bricks and still end up in the 1% by virtue of their inherited privilege.

Quackers · Jan 21, 2012

SS-18 ICBM said:
I wonder about the biology ones. They're in drug companies, aren't they?

I think drug companies are more likely to hire chemists or bio-chemists then pure biology IMO.

Patroklos · Jan 21, 2012

_random_ said:
I think it's a response to the frequent "Those occupiers wouldn't be so poor if they majored in something practical rather than those damn liberal arts degrees." criticisms.

The actual critisism was that whatever you major in, you need to have a viable plan to live off of it as well as a sane expectation of what type of lifestyle that major is likely to deliver.

Dida · Jan 21, 2012

GoodGame said:
pre-med was on the list, but biology is an ok ticket to med-school. I'd bet some of the biology majors went on to PhD's and got stock options in biotechnology companies that they worked for.

Actually the whole list has a lot of ok tickets to med school: chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology.

LOL at people majoring in pre-med. It's not even a major at any respectable university. It's properly just a pre-med program designed to get kids ready for med school, the underlying major should usually be biology or chemistry.

Pangur Bán · Jan 21, 2012

Alot of the 1% are just moderately successful upper middle class professionals, like doctors and vets (accounting for biology). The people really targeted by "1%" are not these guys but lucky finance chaps and upper class brats allowed to do anything they want before entering the upper echelons of whatever part of the economy they feel like entering (should they feel that way). I suspect that among these latter guys liberal arts are indeed high or, along with law (undergrad in many realms) and business, highest. Why make confine your brat to one industry when instead you can give him a brain and keep his options open?!

SS-18 ICBM · Jan 21, 2012

Quackers said:
I think drug companies are more likely to hire chemists or bio-chemists then pure biology IMO.

Drug-making is useless if you can't identify possible biological mechanisms of action. There's definitely a spot for molecular biologists.

Quackers · Jan 21, 2012

According to GSK they are happy with:

We have various programmes to suit different types of graduates ranging from Chemists (e.g. Analytical, Medicinal, Synthetic or Computational) to Biologists (e.g. Pharmacologist, Immunologist or Microbiologist). Whatever your passion, our programmes are structured to give you exposure to our global, scientific business

SS-18 ICBM · Jan 21, 2012

Yeah, Immunology and Microbiology are pure biology fields. And it's a bunch of examples, not an exhaustive list.

Quackers · Jan 21, 2012

Oh of course, I'm just saying drug companies will probably hire more chemists then biologists basically. Am waving down high on mount stupid atm ;p

What the 1% majored in

Deity

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Emperor

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Inconceivable!

Bishop of Bio-Dome

Emperor

Ancient CFC Guardian

isle of lucy

The Frog

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Deconstructed

Oscillator

The Frog

Oscillator

The Frog

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