Business Is One Of The ‘Least-Regretted’ Majors

Undergraduate students at UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce at a job fair. Courtesy photo

These days, picking a college major might be more important than ever. With an unprecedented amount of student loans, future earnings almost has to be factored into a college major decision. Job recruiting platform, ZipRecruiter surveyed 5,225 active job seekers during June 2019 who self-identified as college graduates. Respondents were asked if they regretted their college major choice and if so, what was the “leading reason for regret.”

Business was the second-least regretted major, according to the data. Only 15.5% of business majors reported regretting their degree — higher only than computer science/mathematics, which had a regret-rate of 12.78%. The biggest reason why business majors have regretted their degree is it’s “too general.” Business beat out engineering (15.91% regret), Health Administration and Assisting (17.95%), and Health Sciences & Technology (18.94%).

At the other end, English and Foreign Languages was the most regretted college major with 42% of respondents saying they regret getting the major. Biological and Physical Sciences followed with 35%. Education (31%), Social Sciences & Law (29%), and Communications (27%) rounded out the five most-regretted college majors.

ZipRecruiter also looked at its skills-index, which ranks different job skills on a scale from 0 to 100. The index includes data on nearly 1,500 different skills from 30 million ZipRecruiter job postings between 2017 and 2018. It then ranks skills based on the number of jobs to which each skill provides access, the “geographical breadth” of those job opportunities, the speed of those job opportunities growing or declining, and the average salaries in job postings that require those skills.

Based on those skills, ZipRecruiter also ranked college majors. At the top is Computer Science, which scored an 82 out of 100 on the index scale. Up next is Nursing, which scored 73 out of 100. Following nursing is economics and business management and administration at 62 out of 100. ZipRecruiter did not list beyond the top-three majors.

The obvious draw to business is the job security and earnings potential. But lately, business majors have also emphasized finding jobs with more purpose and meaning. Technology, as an emerging industry has widened the scope of opportunities for business majors and top business schools from North Carolina to Washington state, are placing business graduates into tech companies in droves. Regardless if the interest is finance and accounting or entrepreneurship and tech, the business major remains a competitive degree in an influx economy.

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