Stunning: Journalism The Most Regretted College Major
Forty-four % of current job-seekers with college degrees regret their major. And no group is more ashamed of themselves than J-School graduates.
A recent Zip Recruiter survey found that 87 % of journalism graduates wish they would have majored in another field.
Interestingly, the public also regrets these journalists' choice of field. A New York Times/Siena poll last month learned that 84 % of voters deem the current batch of journalists a “major or minor threat to democracy."
No one is impressed with what universities now trot out as journalism majors -- including journalism majors themselves.
(Disclosure: I did not major in journalism. And I am more impressed with carpenters and UPS drivers than myself, a journalist.)
The survey didn't specify what Big J grads regret most. But we figure their career trajectories are rather dim.
The journalism industry is fractured. The field attracts condescending figures who seek self-gratification. Most of the stooges just want to fit in -- thereby the over-saturation of link-minded journalists who echo the same talking points as the next. Most journalism grads are interchangeable, thus of minimal market value.
A degree in journalism is not a prerequisite to success in the field, see Glenn Greenwald.
Journalists are better off majoring in a field that teaches them to think critically. The most prolific journalists are curious, brave and mercurial. Unfortunately, major college universities rarely teach those skills.
Wacky J-School professors diminish the independence of future grads with their intolerance of dissenting opinions. Radical, even fringe, characters helm journalism classes across campuses.
Meet J.A. Adande, the Director of Sports Journalism at Northwestern, a university that journalists (ironically) deem the Harvard of journalism. Professor Adande recently argued that red-state voting laws in the United States are worse than China committing genocide against Muslim Uyghurs. That's what Northwestern journalism students endure.
Simp professors like Adande are why Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro explained to OutKick last summer why he prefers to hire journalists without degrees:
"Honestly, I’d rather hire somebody straight out of high school, with a strong ACT or SAT score, before they’ve been run through the wringer at college and learned a bunch of stupid nonsense that they need to now unload."
Hard to argue.
Liberal arts degrees, in general, are often of limited value. Fox News host Tucker Carlson teed off on said majors in an interview with OutKick in 2021:
"There is this idea that college improves your worth. Where is the evidence of that? I’m sure that hard sciences do. If you’re an engineer or you are in medical school, you would learn discrete information, actual facts that you can use and that you need to know in order to join the profession that you want to join. But for kids like me who go in for liberal arts education, I believe it diminishes you."
Liberal arts graduates agree. Here are the 10 most regretted college majors:
(By the way: universities tend to give political science degrees to anyone who shows up for most class sessions. For example, Washington Post "journalist" Taylor Lorenz has a degree in P.S. So, you see, another degree that does not improve intellect.)
Society preaches college as a must, as a ticket to success. It's a hustle. College often forces Americans to rely on government loans or vote for Joe Biden to forgive the debt they stole.
What schools and local leaders don't tell young Americans is that blue-collar jobs are in-demand and often pay better than jobs that require fancy-sounding four-year degrees.
Companies across the nation are in search of construction workers, truckers, and furnace installers.
“We have 7.3 million open jobs right now, most of which don’t require a four-year degree,” Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe told Fox Business in March. “They require training, they require skill and they require a willingness to master a trade that’s in demand.”
Recently, Walmart raised the starting salary for in-house truck drivers to as much as $110,000 a year and no lower than $95,000.
That doesn't diminish all college degrees. STEM grads tend to prosper. College provides them with distinct information and skills. The same Zip survey found that over 70 percent of engineering and computer science graduates would major in their field again.
However, graduates of liberal arts degrees often find themselves in mountains of debt with minimal success.
Learn a valuable skill like plumbing or farming. Don't strive to be the next temporary corporate journalist at Deadspin.