29 Does It Pay to Get a Double Major in College?
Learning Outcomes
- Apply the reading process to “Does It Pay to Get a Double Major in College?”
- Summarize the article.
- Respond to the article.
- Use resources to determine whether or not pursuing a double major is right for you.
Preview the Article
Follow the steps below to preview the article “Does It Pay to Get a Double Major in College?” Ideally, you should print the article and write your responses in the margins of the printed copy. To read more about previewing, visit the chapter on previewing a reading.
- Read the title. What does it make you think about? What do you think the article is about? What questions do you have? Record your predictions and questions on the printed copy of the article next to the title.
- What is your experience with double majoring? Have you considered it? Do you know people with double majors? Record your thoughts on the printed article.
- Read the first two or three paragraphs. What additional predictions do you now have about the article? What additional questions do you have? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the article and notice the headings (e.g. Double-majoring on the decline?) within the article. What additional thoughts or questions do these raise? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the bolded and underlined vocabulary in the article. If there are any words that you do not know well, look them up in a print or online dictionary and write some notes about their meanings on the printed copy of the article. Keep in mind that some words have multiple meanings. For example, the word crunched is used in paragraph 4; however, it does not refer to a crushing sound or action. You may need to read the sentence containing the word to understand the word’s usage.
- Based on your preview of the article, what do you think is the central point of the article? (Don’t worry if you are not sure. This is a prediction or guess – you do not have to be correct as long as you are engaging your brain.) Record your prediction on the printed copy of the article.
- Based on your preview, do you predict that the article is narrative, expository, or argumentative?
Read Interactively
Now, read the article using the guidelines from the chapter on reading interactively. As you read, follow these steps to engage with the text.
- Pause to confirm or revise your predictions and to answer the questions you posed while previewing the article. Write down those revised predictions and responses to the questions as you read. If you cannot find the answers to your questions, save them for further research and discussion.
- Pause at other points to check for understanding of what you just read. Can you explain key ideas in your own words yet? If not, reread to clarify. Ideas that come later in a text build on the previous ones. Therefore, it makes no sense to keep reading if you did not understand something or if you became distracted. Anyone can become distracted while reading, so don’t hesitate to use the strategy of rereading when necessary.
- Pay attention to any vocabulary words that are confusing. Look up the words in a dictionary if they are interfering with your understanding, or mark them to return to later.
- Record any opinions or reactions you have to the reading in the margins of the article.
- Write down any further questions that develop as you read.
Does it pay to get a double major in college?
Christos A. Makridis, Stanford University
March 28, 2017
1 Students are bombarded with an array of competing opportunities during college, all with the promise that each will lead to a better job or higher earnings upon entering the “real world.”
2 One such option is the double major, in which a student earns two bachelor degrees at once, sometimes in entirely different disciplines. But will doing so lead to a higher-paying job? Is it worth the “lost” time that could have been spent in other activities such as internships or student government?
3 In college, I earned several degrees, which led to a broader education that I believe enriched the quality and creativity of my thinking and improved my career prospects. As an economist-in-training, however, I wanted hard data to back up my anecdotal experience.
4 To do this, I crunched some numbers from the Census Bureau on over two million full-time workers and analyzed them to see if there’s a connection between earning multiple degrees and financial gain in the years following graduation.
Double-majoring on the decline?
5 While double majors have been a popular way to balance a deep study of the humanities with traditional degrees in the sciences, basic tabulations suggest that the percent of workers with a double major has been roughly constant, or even decreasing, over the past six years depending on how one restricts the sample.
6 For example, looking at all individuals between ages 20 and 29, only 12.5 percent of the population had a double major in 2015, which is down from 14.2 percent in 2009, according to my calculations from the American Community Survey (ACS) Census data. At the same time, the percent of workers within the same age range with any kind of college degree grew from roughly 23 to 36 percent.
7 On the one hand, double-majoring can help students avoid becoming overly specialized, exposing them to new ways of thinking and communicating with others outside their primary area. On the other, it creates a trade-off with other educational opportunities.
8 In 2013, the National Commission on Higher Education Attainment went so far as to urge universities to “narrow student choice” to promote degree completion – perhaps by restricting or even banning the completion of double majors.
What existing research says
9 Previous research on whether a double major pays off has shown mixed results.
10 A 2011 paper found that a double major, on average, yields a 3.2 percent earnings premium over a peer with only one degree. The paper noted that the premium ranged from nothing at liberal arts colleges to almost 4 percent at “research and comprehensive” universities.
11 A more recent study, published in 2016, concluded that liberal arts students who tacked on a second degree in either business or a science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) field earned somewhat more than their single-major peers. But the authors noted that there was no premium when compared with a single STEM or business degree.
12 Both of these papers, however, are based on relatively small cross-sections of individuals, which makes them less representative and limits their statistical power. In addition, they focus on single years – 2003 and 2010, respectively – which means the results may be affected by any transient economic conditions that occurred that year.
What my research showed
13 In my own analysis, I examined data on over two million full-time workers aged 20 to 65 over a six-year period (2009-2015) using Census Bureau data. The bureau provides the largest source of publicly available information on individuals and households, helping to ensure that the analysis is both representative and detailed. The data set included information on each individual’s earnings, occupation, undergraduate degrees and a wide range of other demographic data.
See data on Average Incomes by Type of Major.14 My results showed that liberal arts students who take on a second degree in a STEM field earned, on average, 9.5 percent more than their liberal arts peers with only one major, after controlling for individual demographic factors, such as age, years of schooling, marital status, gender, family size and race. Students who combined a liberal arts degree with a business major earned 7.9 percent more.
15 You might be thinking that this isn’t really a surprise. Of course STEM majors will earn more than their liberal arts counterparts. While my analysis already controls for the fact that STEM and business majors generally earn more than their counterparts, I wanted to dig a little deeper. So I restricted the sample to compare STEM-liberal arts double majors with those with a single STEM degree. Although the premium shrinks, engineers and scientists who take on an extra liberal arts degree earned 3.6 percent more, on average.
16 I also wanted to see if the premium exists when comparing people in similar occupations. For example, consider two journalism school grads, one with a single degree, the other with a second in engineering. Naturally the one who becomes a working journalist, which generally pays poorly, will earn less than his classmate who decided journalism wasn’t for her and got a job at Google.
See data on Average Incomes by Occupation.17 So, controlling for occupation, I found that the returns to double-majoring in liberal arts and STEM were 5.2 percent, and 3.4 percent with a business degree. In other words, even when we look within narrow occupational categories, those who double-majored across fields tended to earn more than those with a single degree.
So should I double major?
18 So for those of you about to head to college, should you go for a double major? Or should you advise it to your kids?
19 As with anything, it depends. I tried to make my analysis as robust as possible, but it’s still not entirely clear whether the connection between the double degrees and higher earnings is causal. However, my results do suggest it’s more than mere correlation.
20 Furthermore, an association with higher earnings doesn’t mean the double major is right for everyone, particularly since the premium varies based on an individual’s own career path and preferences. Every college student needs to weigh the pros and cons of every potential opportunity, from picking up a second degree to joining student government.
21 My research suggests, however, that students who are eager to expose themselves to more frames of thinking and disciplinary knowledge may well be investing in the very foundation that prepares them for a successful and innovative career.
Christos A. Makridis, Ph.D. Candidate in Labor and Public Economics, Stanford University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Reflect
After reading the article, use the following questions to reflect on the content of the article and your reading process. See the chapter about reflecting for a discussion of why this is a crucial step.
- Try to paraphrase the main idea in a sentence. This may be challenging because you have read the article only once. If you are struggling, do your best. You can refine this when you reread and summarize the article.
- Is the article primarily narrative, expository, or argumentative? What is the purpose of the article? In other words, why do you think the author wrote it?
- Which predictions were accurate, and which did you have to revise?
- As you previewed the article, you wrote questions. What questions remain unanswered after reading the article?
- What else do you want to know about the article or topic of the reading? Write down any additional questions.
- How did previewing the article help you to understand and engage with the text while reading?
- Where did you struggle to understand something in the text, and how did you work through it?
- What, if anything, could you have done differently to improve your reading process?
Summarize
Complete a summary of the article by following these steps. Make sure you have read the chapters about Reading to Summarize before proceeding with the summary.
- Reread the article and complete the Summary Notes. See Preparing to Summarize for a review of this topic and an example.
- Then, use your Summary Notes to write a one-paragraph summary of the article. See Writing a Summary for a review of this topic and an example. Make sure that you include in-text citations and the Work Cited.
- Use the self-assessment/peer review questions from Evaluating a Summary to self-assess your summary or invite a peer to provide feedback.
- Use the self-assessment or peer feedback to make changes to your summary.
Make sure you are comfortable with your summary before advancing to the response. If you misunderstand something in the article, then your response may be skewed based on that misunderstanding.
Respond
Write a response to the article by following these steps. Make sure you have read the chapters about Reading to Respond before proceeding with the summary.
- Use the Response Questions from Preparing to Respond to brainstorm possible ideas for your response. See the example in that same chapter.
- Read over your replies to the Response Questions. Choose one idea to write about in your response. Express that idea in a topic sentence. See Writing a Topic Sentence for a Response for examples. Ask a peer for feedback on your topic sentence.
- Brainstorm about possible support you could use in your response. See Generating Support for a Response for examples.
- Use your topic sentence and ideas from the list of support to write a one-paragraph response. See Writing a Response writing guidelines and examples. Make sure that you include the Work Cited and in-text citations for any quotes or specific ideas from the article.
- Use the self-assessment/peer review questions from Evaluating a Response to evaluate your response or have a peer provide feedback.
- Use the self-assessment or peer feedback to make improvements to your response.
Extend: Apply and Discuss
Make an appointment with an academic advisor or counselor to talk about the requirements for double majoring at your college and the potential benefits of double majoring in your future. Additionally, talk with peers or family members about why they chose to double major or not. Then, reflect on whether or not you should pursue a double major. Share what you learned with your peers.