Skepticism over the value of a college degree, especially one in the liberal arts, is common these days. Rising college prices, increasing levels of student debt, and a still weak job market place all heighten doubts. Return on investment has become a popular research question, and a college-education association released on Wednesday a report arguing that a liberal-arts major is a worthwhile choice.

In recent years, new data have helped pigment a detailed picture of what higher graduates earn. Analyses take focused on what they make by major, or by degree program at particular colleges.

On Wednesday the Association of American Colleges and Universities—a champion of liberal education—stepped into the fray with a report, based on data from the U.S. Census Agency's American Community Survey, that examines the payoff of a liberal-arts degree over the course of a career.

While the group does not buy into the idea that earnings are the almost important college outcome, it had to respond to the "growing myth" that liberal-arts majors leave students "unemployed and unemployable," said Carol Geary Schneider, its president.

The liberal arts and sciences take traditionally been seen as laying "a foundation for future learning in the professions and in scholarly piece of work," said Ms. Schneider. The study, she said, shows that to be true.

While humanities and social-scientific discipline majors started out almost the bottom of all higher graduates in terms of salary, the study says, older people who majored in those fields—many of whom besides held graduate degrees—outearned their peers who'd picked professional and pre-professional person majors.

Right out of college, graduates in humanities and social science made, on average, $26,271 in 2010 and 2011, a bit more those in science and mathematics but less than those in engineering and in professional person and pre-professional fields, co-ordinate to the written report. But at their meridian earning ages, 56 to lx, humanities and social-science majors earned $66,185, putting them some $2,000 ahead of professional and pre-professional majors in the same age bracket.

Graduate Degrees Assist

Often the focus is on what graduates make correct out of the gate, said Debra Humphreys, a co-author of the written report and vice president for policy and public engagement at the group, known as AAC&U. Simply career success, she said, is "more a marathon than a sprint."

Not surprisingly, people with engineering degrees practise particularly well over the course of a career (making $97,751 at peak earning ages). Only, the report points out, they are a small grouping: simply 9 per centum of working college graduates. Science and math majors also practice quite well over fourth dimension (making $86,550 at peak earning ages).

One large reason that older humanities and social-science majors outearn professional person majors is that about 40 percent of people in the former group also hold a graduate degree. In fact, the study says, earning a graduate degree on meridian of a humanities or social-science undergraduate major corresponds with a median almanac earnings ascension of $19,550. Excluding the graduate-caste holders, humanities and social-science majors earned less than professional person and pre-professional majors.

Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Centre on Instruction and the Workforce, said he was glad to see the AAC&U tackle the issue of how degrees pay off, a topic he has written a number of reports virtually. "They're essentially legitimizing the question," he said.

The report makes a solid argument confronting those who say liberal-arts degrees have no value in the marketplace, Mr. Carnevale said. At the same fourth dimension, it sends a message to liberal-arts majors he would put more bluntly: "Get to graduate school."

Choosing a Major

The AAC&U designed the report with ii audiences in mind: policy makers, and students and their families, said Ms. Humphreys.

It'due south important that students start higher with a practiced sense of what they're likely to earn with different majors—and not just immediately afterwards graduation, she said. One need non choose a major that sounds similar a job, Ms. Humphreys said, to have a successful professional person life.

As for policy makers, she hopes they'll recognize that social club needs workers in a wide array of fields, not just those that are most lucrative. Humanities and social-science graduates are overrepresented, the study points out, in fields that are important merely not well paid, like social work and counseling.

The report, "How Liberal Arts and Sciences Majors Fare in Employment," relies on the American Community Survey, which recently began tracking college majors. The information, from 2010 and 2011, cover education and occupation for about three million people.

To requite a sense of how workers fare over the course of a career, the report examines annual median earnings in age-group increments of five years, from 21 to 65.

Looking at earnings over a whole career is useful, said Mark Southward. Schneider, vice president of the American Institutes for Enquiry, who has examined short-term earnings past degree program.

Merely the report doesn't give students what they demand to brand an informed decision almost how much debt to accept on, said Mr. Schneider. "It's the program-level data that is actually of import."

No data to calculate the value of a degree are perfect. Median earnings, on which many analyses are based, take their limits, said Sandy Baum, a research professor at George Washington Academy's Graduate School of Education and Human Development and author of the College Board's "Education Pays" reports. Medians tin't reply the real question, she said: Do near people make a reasonable amount of money?

Research on the extent to which graduates come out alee—and which ones, past how much—is a complex, charged exercise. With everyone asking well-nigh return on investment, even groups that don't think the value of a degree tin be quantified are doing the math.

Correction (1/22/2014, xi:24 a.yard.): This article originally said that humanities and social-scientific discipline majors brand $66,185, on average, during their peak earning years, ages 56 to 60, putting them some $two,000 ahead of professional and pre-professional majors at their peak. It has been corrected to say that humanities and social-science majors earn some $2,000 ahead of professional and pre-professional majors in the same age bracket.

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