Limitations

Students with different interests and abilities choose different majors, and ability has a substantial impact on earnings (Arcidiacono Reference Arcidiacono2004; Webber Reference Webber2014, Reference Webber2015) and, presumably, educational attainment. Students in the highest-paying majors have the highest mean SAT-math scores (Altonji, Blom, and Meghir Reference Altonji, Blom and Meghir2012), and math ability and classes have important impacts on earnings (Rendall and Rendall Reference Rendall and Rendall2013). Because ACS data do not include any measures of ability, this research cannot test the possibility that differences in abilities among people choosing different majors explain all the differences in unemployment, educational attainment, and earnings. Political science graduates may not have earned more if they had majored in computer science, nor less if they had chosen English.

Unemployment

Unemployment rates are high for those in their 20s, but substantially lower for college graduates than for the less-educated (4.9% versus 11.7% in 2009–2014). Political science majors’ unemployment rate of 6.6% was nearly the highest among college graduates, however (table 1), and a logit model controlling for individual characteristics did not substantially alter that picture (also see appendix table 1). The first column shows unemployment rates; the rate of 2.8% for health science majors, for instance, is 3.8 percentage points lower than for political science majors. The second column shows the differences in unemployment rates (relative to political science) after controlling for education, age, race/ethnicity, gender, relationship status, year, and state; this difference remained at 3.5 points. Graduates of half the majors—including business, social work, psychology, criminal justice, economics, sociology, and communications—were 1 to 3 percentage points less likely to be unemployed than comparable political science majors. No major had a significantly higher unemployment rate than political science.

Table 1

Probability of Unemployment for 21-to-30-Year-Olds, by Major

Differences from political science are significant at the ***.001, **.01, or *.05 level. Logit model for unemployment includes college graduates aged 21-30 living in the U.S. and not currently attending school. Model uses dummy variables to control for age, educational attainment, race/ethnicity/gender, relationship type, year, and state of residence. Logit coefficients were converted to probability differences using Stata’s margins command to calculate average partial effects.

Educational Attainment

This possible difficulty in starting a career may contribute to political science majors’ decisions to pursue further education. Only 46% of political science majors stopped with a bachelor’s degree; 5.5% earned doctorates, and the remaining 49% were split almost evenly between master’s and professional degrees (table 2). The remainder of the table shows differences from political science in probabilities of each degree after a full set of controls (also see appendix tables 2 and 3). Only biology, philosophy, and physics majors are more likely to obtain graduate degrees, with the difference primarily in doctorates. Political science majors stand out for professional degrees: only biology majors are more likely to earn them, and only history majors are within 10 percentage points as likely as comparable political science majors to do so. One-fifth of political science graduates complete law school.

Table 2

Educational Attainment of College Graduates Aged 34 and Above, by Major

Differences from political science are significant at .0001, except *.05 or ^N.S. not significant. Multinomial logit model for educational includes college graduates aged 34 and over, living in the United States. Model uses dummy variables to control for age, race/ethnicity/gender, relationship type, year, and state of employment and for whether currently attending school. Logit coefficients were converted to average partial effects.

Table 3

Top Occupations for College Graduates Who Majored in Political Science

Occupations

Although career guidance for political science majors (e.g., American Political Science Association 2001; Clark Reference Clark2004) typically emphasizes government careers, three-quarters of political science majors work in the private sector. The most common jobs of those with bachelor’s degrees are in management and sales (table 3). Government jobs include public administrators, police officers, and primary school teachers. Those with master’s degrees are most typically in management or education, and most of those with professional degrees or doctorates work as lawyers, though management is also common.

Earnings

Political science majors with bachelor’s degrees earn, on average, 67% more than comparable high school graduates; those with master’s, professional, and doctoral degrees earn 99%, 170%, and 128% more than high school graduates, respectively (not shown). Table 4 shows mean earnings by major, and model 1 of table 5 shows percentage differences from political science majors, controlling for year; only engineering, economics, biology, and physics majors earn more. Political science majors’ mean salaries are slightly higher than those for computer science and business majors and are 20% to 30% higher than for those in English, communications, psychology, criminal justice, and sociology.

Table 4

Mean and Median Salaries by Major, 2009–14

Table 5

Percentage Differences in Expected Earnings Relative to Comparable Political Science Majors, 2009–14

All differences from political science are significant at the .0001 level unless indicated by ^N.S.

One reason is political science majors’ high educational attainment. When model 2 controls for degree, most majors’ pay rises by at least 10% relative to political science. Individual demographics also explain some of the pay advantage in the most lucrative majors. Engineering, computer science, and economics majors are disproportionately male, white, and Asian (appendix table 4), groups that tend to earn higher salaries overall; when those factors are controlled in model 3, the pay differential shrinks (see appendix table 5). The pay advantage to majoring in the health sciences jumps, however, because of their over-representation of women, blacks, and Latinos. ^{Footnote 2}

Adding hours worked and state of employment also shifts political science majors downward (model 4), partly because they are among the four majors who work the longest hours and the three majors who work in the highest-paying states. (In particular, 5.4% of political science majors work in Washington, DC, 4.6 times the rate for college graduates overall and nearly twice the rate even for economics and foreign language majors.) With all these variables in the model, political science majors earn 10% to 20% less than engineering, computer science, health science, economics, and math majors, but only 4% less than business majors and at least 10% more than those in other social sciences and the humanities.