10 Most Dynamic Majors

Col­lege is no longer a priv­i­lege reserved for the rich­est, bright­est, or most pow­er­ful, in fact, a stag­ger­ing 70% of Amer­i­cans now at least attempt col­lege, and beyond that about 40% of work­ing age Amer­i­cans have col­lege degrees. What this means is that the col­lege degree is no longer the seri­ous advan­tage that it used to be.

Of the 9 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who are cur­rent­ly unem­ployed, 4.7 mil­lion went to col­lege and 4.3 mil­lion did not go to col­lege. For the first time in his­to­ry, the major­i­ty of the unem­ployed are peo­ple who have attend­ed col­lege. Of course, this sta­tis­tic includes all those who attend­ed col­lege, whether they grad­u­at­ed or not, which includes the 50% of col­lege dropouts.

Regard­less, even if you do grad­u­ate, the out­look is still grim. As of 2023, The Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute report­ed that around 8% of col­lege grad­u­ates between the ages of 21 and 24 were unem­ployed, which is over 2% high­er than the nation­al unem­ploy­ment rate. Even more frus­trat­ing is recent research sug­gest­ing that even when col­lege grad­u­ates land jobs, they are jobs that aren’t worth the price of a col­lege diploma.

Of the 41.7 mil­lion work­ing col­lege grad­u­ates from the class of 2023, 28% worked jobs that required less than a bach­e­lor’s degree expe­ri­ence, and 6% of those did­n’t even need high school diplo­mas for their job posi­tions. Con­sid­er­ing all these star­tling dis­cov­er­ies, prospec­tive stu­dents are wor­ried about invest­ing time and mon­ey into col­lege if the rewards are unre­li­able at best.

In this arti­cle we will explore the most dynam­ic majors, that is, the areas of col­lege-lev­el study that are most adap­tive to the cur­rent state of eco­nom­ic insta­bil­i­ty and offer col­lege grad­u­ates the most and the best oppor­tu­ni­ties. In today’s econ­o­my indi­vid­u­als striv­ing for suc­cess do what­ev­er they can to stand out and demon­strate their capa­bil­i­ties, and declar­ing the right major can do just that. These majors were select­ed due to start­ing salaries, medi­an mid-career pay, indus­try growth, job avail­abil­i­ty with­in the indus­try, and the num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties asso­ci­at­ed with the major. Some of these majors are very spe­cif­ic and spe­cial­ized, while oth­ers are a gen­er­al study of a cer­tain subject.

Spe­cif­ic and spe­cial­ized majors often offer more in terms of sta­bil­i­ty and salary, while the broad­er areas of study offer more diverse and numer­ous career paths. Ulti­mate­ly, whether a major is dynam­ic or not the results are deter­mined by the individual.

1: Biomedical Engineering

One of the great­est times for an indus­try is when demand exceeds sup­ply, mean­ing that the indus­try can expand to meet the demand. In the case of bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing, research facil­i­ties and engi­neer­ing firms across the coun­try are scram­bling to make use of the boom­ing advances in bio­engi­neer­ing technology.

Because this is an incred­i­bly new indus­try, it offers the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth and expan­sion, mean­ing there is more than enough room for aspir­ing bio­med­ical engi­neers. Start­ing medi­an pay is list­ed at $63,420 with a medi­an mid-career pay of $99,550. Pro­ject­ed job growth over the next decade is a whop­ping 61.7%.

While this major is one of the most focused com­pared to oth­er majors on this list, there are still many paths with­in the field. Recent col­lege grad­u­ates with a degree in bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing can expect research oppor­tu­ni­ties, bio­med­ical sup­plies sales posi­tions, and bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing firms eager for new minds.

Engi­neer­ing itself is one of the safest choic­es one can make in choos­ing a col­lege major. As tech­nol­o­gy advances by leaps and bounds each year, engi­neers work hard to keep up and pro­duce new designs and tech­nol­o­gy. The ever-steady growth of the med­ical indus­try cou­pled with the extreme­ly fast-grow­ing bio­med­ical sup­plies indus­try makes the bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing spe­cial­iza­tion one of the best avail­able if you’ve got the mind for it.

Its no sur­prise that Forbes has named bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing the most valu­able major cur­rent­ly. Prospec­tive stu­dents inter­est­ed in this career path should explore uni­ver­si­ties that main­tain work­ing rela­tion­ships with bio­med­ical research facil­i­ties and hos­pi­tals. The nation’s top-ranked bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing pro­gram is offered at John Hop­kins University.

2: Computer Science

Many peo­ple would agree that we live in the age of com­put­ers. Com­put­ers and inter­net tech­nol­o­gy have lit­er­al­ly changed the face of our plan­et and our every­day rou­tines. Com­put­ers, the inter­net, and soft­ware are inter­twined with near­ly every indus­try on the plan­et and because of this those with a com­put­er sci­ence degree have immense oppor­tu­ni­ties ahead of them. Grant­ed they will be con­fined to a cer­tain type of work–whether it’s cod­ing, pro­gram­ming, or software/hardware design– but they can con­duct this work across a vast vari­ety of contexts.

Also, com­put­er sci­ence is one of the great­est foun­da­tions for entre­pre­neur­ial pur­suits because it pro­vides the skills nec­es­sary to nav­i­gate web­space and uti­lize inter­net and soft­ware infra­struc­tures that are cru­cial to the suc­cess of new busi­ness­es. Start­ing medi­an pay is list­ed at $78,190 with the medi­an mid-career pay at $136,620.

The indus­try is expect­ed to grow by around 23% over the next decade. Recent­ly grad­u­at­ed com­put­er sci­en­tists can expect oppor­tu­ni­ties in teach­ing, self-employed con­tract­ing for com­pa­nies that out­source tech posi­tions, soft­ware engi­neer­ing com­pa­nies, tech­ni­cal sup­port posi­tions, com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy sales posi­tions, game design­ing, com­put­er and mobile device app devel­op­ment, and many more.

While some of these oppor­tu­ni­ties may require more than a sim­ple com­put­er sci­ence degree, they are still read­i­ly avail­able with the right expe­ri­ences, which can often be gained through under­grad­u­ate intern­ships. Com­put­ers and the inter­net are only becom­ing more impor­tant as time goes on, so for any com­put­er gurus out there–the com­put­er sci­ence degree is a bet­ter choice than it ever has been before.

3: Psychology

A degree in psy­chol­o­gy can take you many places, how­ev­er, many look at some of the employ­ment sta­tis­tics of the indus­try and assume there are bet­ter paths to be taken.

The 2022 aver­age medi­an pay of all psy­chol­o­gists was $85,330, and because there are so many diverse career paths for recent­ly grad­u­at­ed psy­chol­o­gy majors there is lit­tle help­ful research on what they can expect in terms of entry-lev­el salaries. While the major itself may not seem to have the high salaries and job growth like oth­ers on this list, it pro­vides an unpar­al­leled lev­el of diver­si­ty in career paths, and thus offers a much larg­er num­ber of poten­tial jobs.

Psy­chol­o­gy at its heart is the study of the mind, and the mind is the source of every action and every hour of work put into any job since the begin­ning of time. For this rea­son, psy­chol­o­gy is one of the most attrac­tive under­grad­u­ate back­grounds to employ­ers in many dif­fer­ent job types.

For those com­mit­ted to psy­chol­o­gy, there are an enor­mous num­ber of spe­cial­ties and inter­ests aspir­ing psy­chol­o­gists may pur­sue: clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy, sports psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy, indus­tri­al psy­chol­o­gy, foren­sic psy­chol­o­gy, and social psy­chol­o­gy. Accord­ing to “Com­plete Psy­chol­o­gy” by Gra­ham Dav­ey (2007), how­ev­er, only about 15–0% of those with a psy­chol­o­gy degree go on to become pro­fes­sion­al psy­chol­o­gists. Many put their knowl­edge of psy­cho­log­i­cal prin­ci­ples to use in oth­er fields such as mar­ket­ing, busi­ness, adver­tis­ing, human resources, busi­ness man­age­ment, crim­i­nal jus­tice, edu­ca­tion, pol­i­tics or pub­lic affairs, and many others.

While oth­er majors in this list pro­vide sta­bil­i­ty and guar­an­teed wealth, psy­chol­o­gy offers diver­si­ty and guar­an­tees the abil­i­ty to fol­low your inter­est into what­ev­er field suits you best. The down­side is, how­ev­er, that the psy­chol­o­gy degree is incred­i­bly pop­u­lar. It ranks as the third most pop­u­lar area of study at the under­grad­u­ate lev­el. What this means is that stu­dents aspir­ing to reach high-lev­el posi­tions and weighty salaries must dis­tin­guish them­selves in many ways, because the degree alone is not enough as it is in some cases.

4: Environmental Engineering

After the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, nuclear plant explo­sions, an expo­nen­tial increase in car­bon monox­ide, and the gen­er­al trend of mankind pol­lut­ing the plan­et Earth, there is great need for an indus­try devot­ed to repair­ing such dam­age. And as more coun­tries become devel­oped nations, they no longer need to focus on expan­sion and devel­op­ment and instead shift their focus to sustainability.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is the mantra for count­less indus­tries: auto-mobile com­pa­nies are seek­ing a green­er alter­na­tive to gaso­line, indus­tri­al fac­to­ries are held to strict envi­ron­men­tal codes and guide­lines, ever-shrink­ing rain forests and wildlife reserves require con­stant atten­tion, etc. and at the cen­ter of this trend is the envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer. As sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the reduc­tion of envi­ron­men­tal haz­ards become hot top­ics in eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics, envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing grows as an indus­try and becomes more lucra­tive to its members.

Start­ing medi­an pay is list­ed at $60,020 with a mid-career medi­an pay of $96,530. While job growth is pro­ject­ed at 6% for the next decade, growth in pay is esti­mat­ed to be 44%. Stu­dents grad­u­at­ing with an envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing degree can explore a wide vari­ety of oppor­tu­ni­ties at wildlife preser­va­tion agen­cies, envi­ron­men­tal­ist advo­ca­cy groups, fed­er­al envi­ron­men­tal inspec­tion firms, teach­ing posi­tions, wild-life pro­tec­tion vol­un­teer groups, and at archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing firms.

Nobody is going to make any more land any time soon, which means that there will always be the demand for envi­ron­men­tal engi­neers to fix and pre­serve what lit­tle we have left.

5: Geology

Often con­sid­ered mun­dane or writ­ten off as “the study of rocks” the geol­o­gy major is actu­al­ly an incred­i­bly dynam­ic and very safe choice. Nat­ur­al resources are the most valu­able thing on this plan­et and are the foun­da­tion for hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of indus­tries, and geol­o­gists are the key to tak­ing advan­tage of nat­ur­al resources.

Start­ing medi­an pay sits at around $49,150 with a mid-career medi­an pay of $87,480. Pro­ject­ed growth over the next decade is 5%, how­ev­er, the pay growth is esti­mat­ed at an incred­i­ble 83%. Because our nat­ur­al resources are finite, there is a huge incen­tive to train and employ new geol­o­gists in explo­ration and obtain­ment of these nat­ur­al resources.

A geol­o­gy major can lead to any of the fol­low­ing career paths: the indus­try of min­er­al and petro­le­um explo­ration, aca­d­e­m­ic research and teach­ing, fed­er­al research, pale­on­tol­ogy, geo­chem­istry, petrol­o­gy, stratig­ra­phy, geo­log­i­cal map­ping expe­di­tions, min­er­al deposit research, and con­sult­ing posi­tions. No mat­ter what path is cho­sen, how­ev­er, there is guar­an­teed to be many lucra­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties along the way and an extreme­ly sta­ble job mar­ket for decades to come.

6: Management Information Systems

Man­age­ment Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (MIS) is the study of peo­ple, tech­nol­o­gy, and the rela­tion­ship between them.

We live in an era where new tech­nolo­gies are being devel­oped on a dai­ly basis, many of which have the capa­bil­i­ty to change our day-to-day lives per­ma­nent­ly. 85% of peo­ple in the world own a smart­phone, and 94% of house­holds own a com­put­er. As tech­nol­o­gy becomes such an inte­gral aspect of human exis­tence, tech­nol­o­gy indus­tries expe­ri­ence amaz­ing growth.

Start­ing medi­an pay for a recent col­lege grad­u­ate with an MIS degree is about $70,000 with a mid-career pay of $100,000. Pro­ject­ed job growth is steady at 15% for the next decade, with a 73% growth in pay. Infor­ma­tion sys­tems refer to any form of data col­lec­tion or infor­ma­tion man­age­ment used in busi­ness­es, and those with an MIS degree become experts at han­dling these systems.

These skills open doors to a vari­ety of career paths such as IT con­sul­tan­cy, web devel­op­ment, busi­ness intel­li­gence analy­sis, net­work admin­is­tra­tion, busi­ness appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment, sys­tems analy­sis, tech­ni­cal sup­port, busi­ness analy­sis, and sys­tems devel­op­ment. For those inter­est­ed in being on the front­lines of the tech indus­try and work­ing with peo­ple more than a com­put­er sci­en­tist might, a degree in MIS is an excel­lent option.

7: Applied Mathematics

Math lies at the heart of almost every piece of tech­nol­o­gy ever pro­duced, every busi­ness trans­ac­tion, and every string of pro­gram­ming code. For this rea­son, a stu­dent with a degree in applied math­e­mat­ics can choose from hun­dreds of career paths.

Gov­ern­ment labs, research offices, and agen­cies all employ a large num­ber of applied math­e­mati­cians. They can also work in any of the fol­low­ing areas: engi­neer­ing research orga­ni­za­tions, com­put­er infor­ma­tion and soft­ware firms, ener­gy sys­tems firms, elec­tron­ics and com­put­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, con­sult­ing firms, aero­space, trans­porta­tion equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, finan­cial ser­vice and finan­cial invest­ment man­age­ment firms, com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice providers, chem­i­cal or phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers, and research institutes.

Start­ing medi­an salary is $57,680 with a mid-career medi­an pay of $112,110. Job growth is pro­ject­ed at 30% over the next ten years with a growth in pay esti­mat­ed at 88%. Those who are gift­ed in math­e­mat­i­cal skills and enjoy such work are able to choose from many sta­ble and high-salary jobs that will only increase in num­ber for years to come. It is an extreme­ly good time to be a mathematician.

8: Statistics

As men­tioned above we live in the era of tech­nol­o­gy and infor­ma­tion, so sta­tis­tics is more rel­e­vant than ever as it is the analy­sis and inter­pre­ta­tion of information.

As the largest and most pow­er­ful com­pa­nies on the plan­et seek out more data on how con­sumers make pur­chas­ing deci­sions, on demo­graph­ics, and on oth­er aspects of our cul­ture, the demand for sta­tis­ti­cians to orga­nize and inter­pret that data grows rapid­ly. Cur­rent­ly, it is an inter­na­tion­al top­ic of seri­ous debate whether gov­ern­ments should be allowed to store data on indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens, the most promi­nent search engines on the inter­net store search his­to­ry for each per­son, and as indi­vid­u­als, we try to store as much data about our own lives as we can.

Thus a sta­tis­ti­cian can find work in var­i­ous employ­ment sec­tors. A stu­dent grad­u­at­ing with a degree in sta­tis­tics can plan on pur­su­ing any of the fol­low­ing types of work: pro­ject­ing nuclear plant per­for­mance, work­ing for the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency to eval­u­ate the impact of var­i­ous pol­lu­tants on the envi­ron­ment, ana­lyz­ing and pre­dict­ing con­sumer trends, ana­lyz­ing and improv­ing per­for­mance pro­ce­dures in man­u­fac­tur­ing plants, and many more. A sta­tis­tics major can take you into a hands-on envi­ron­ment work­ing with groups of peo­ple, or allow you a more seclud­ed envi­ron­ment. The choice is up to the individual.

Start­ing medi­an pay is $40,500 with a mid-career jump to a medi­an of $83,657. While pro­ject­ed growth is just above aver­age at 30%, growth in pay is the largest on this list at 91%.

9: Communications

The com­mu­ni­ca­tions major focus­es on under­stand­ing the meth­ods and con­tent of human com­mu­ni­ca­tion, so as to devel­op and pro­mote its effec­tive and eth­i­cal practice.

It is esti­mat­ed that 75% of a per­son­’s day is spent com­mu­ni­cat­ing in some way, so like psy­chol­o­gy, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions major takes advan­tage of some of the most fun­da­men­tal aspects of human exis­tence. Also like psy­chol­o­gy, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions degree is defined less by sta­bil­i­ty and sky-high salaries and more by the diver­si­ty of choice in poten­tial job environments.

Because the com­mu­ni­ca­tion major pro­vides a skill set that is so fun­da­men­tal to human per­for­mance, it is rel­e­vant across a wide vari­ety of jobs. Some of the most pop­u­lar careers for a com­mu­ni­ca­tions major are as fol­lows: nego­tia­tor, medi­a­tor, pub­lic rela­tions offi­cer, human resources man­ag­er, exec­u­tive man­ag­er, train­er, admis­sions coun­selor, per­son­nel recruiter, mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist, sales­per­son, cre­ative direc­tor, lan­guage arts coor­di­na­tor, talk show host, direc­tor, and cast­ing director.

With a com­mu­ni­ca­tions degree you can expect a start­ing salary of about $57,000, and about dou­ble that with 10–15 years expe­ri­ence. Stu­dents with a nat­ur­al incli­na­tion towards inter­per­son­al inter­ac­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion will excel at the com­mu­ni­ca­tions major, and will have a vast array of inter­est­ing and unique career paths at his or her dis­pos­al that fit any set of inter­ests and adapt to the fluc­tu­a­tions of the con­stant­ly chang­ing job market.

10: English

Sim­i­lar to psy­chol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the Eng­lish major is the study of the human lan­guage — how mean­ing is con­veyed, what mean­ing is, and the tech­ni­cal com­po­nents behind it. Also like the com­mu­ni­ca­tions degree and psy­chol­o­gy, there are no mas­sive salaries to promise or explo­sive job growth to guar­an­tee, but what is lost in sta­bil­i­ty is gained in opportunity.

The skillset pro­vid­ed by the Eng­lish major trans­lates into many career types. Many Eng­lish majors go on to become teach­ers, but many use their com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tion to pur­sue careers in law and/or pol­i­tics. Law schools and grad­u­ate pro­grams find Eng­lish majors high­ly attrac­tive com­pared to many oth­er prepara­to­ry degrees. Like art majors, Eng­lish majors are noto­ri­ous for hav­ing employ­ment issues after they grad­u­ate. This is not due to a lack of val­ue in the Eng­lish major, but it is due to Eng­lish majors over­es­ti­mat­ing the pow­er of their degree to pick up jobs, and/or expect­ing to imme­di­ate­ly enter into an amaz­ing career as a nov­el­ist, poet, or journalist.

Eng­lish majors who gar­ner the right amount of expe­ri­ence along the way have an impres­sive amount of oppor­tu­ni­ties before them such as tech­ni­cal writ­ing, pub­lish­ing, blog­ging, edit­ing, speech writ­ing, grant writ­ing, edu­ca­tion­al writ­ing, jour­nal­ism, free­lance writ­ing, as well as jobs out­side of writ­ing such as project man­ag­ing and polit­i­cal cam­paign man­ag­ing, pub­lic affairs, and cor­po­rate communications.

Out of col­lege, Eng­lish majors can rea­son­ably expect a start-up salary of around $23,000 with a salary of around $75,500 ten years down the road. Because the Eng­lish major is so wild­ly pop­u­lar, aspir­ing Eng­lish majors should seek out ways to dis­tin­guish them­selves and set them­selves apart with unique expe­ri­ence back­grounds in order to make the most of their Eng­lish major.

Relat­ed:

10 High­est-Pay­ing Engi­neer­ing Bachelor’s

What Are The High­est Pay­ing Busi­ness Degrees?

25 Best Pay­ing Careers for Bachelor’s Degree Grads

What Are the Top Pay­ing Careers in Communications?

What Are The Eas­i­est Col­lege Degrees For High-Pay­ing Careers?