College graduates earn $1 million more than high school graduates over their lifetime, and the income gap between the highest-paid college majors and the lowest-paid is more than $3 million dollars. This is all according to a study released Thursday by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The study analyzed wages for 137 college majors to discover the economic benefit of earning an advanced degree by undergraduate major.
“Not all bachelor’s degrees are created equal,” the report concluded. Among the 15 groups of college majors studied, architecture and engineering majors are paid the most and education majors are paid the least. Graduates with degrees in top-paying college majors earn $3.4 million more than those with the lowest-paying majors over a lifetime. Not surprisingly, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and health and business majors are the highest paid, leading to average annual wages of $37,000 or more at the entry level and an average of $65,000.
