African Americans: College Majors and Earnings

Image

Earnings vary greatly among college majors. While college access has increased among African Americans, they are overrepresented in majors that lead to low-paying jobs. African Americans: College Majors and Earnings shows that African Americans, who represent 12 percent of the U.S. population, are underrepresented in the number of college majors associated with the fastest growing, highest-paying occupations.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/african-american-majors/

Despite the increase in college access among African Americans, African Americans are highly concentrated in low-paying majors. African Americans: College Majors and Earnings analyzes 137 detailed majors among African Americans to find that:

• African Americans only account for 8 percent of general engineering majors, 7 percent of mathematics majors, and 5 percent of computer majors
• Law and public policy is the top major group for African Americans with a Bachelor’s degree
• The highest concentrated detailed major among African Americans is in health and medical administration
• The second lowest-paying major among African American is in human services and community organization with median earnings at $39,000

Read the full report

Watch this video to get a snapshot of the report findings.

Note: there are no spoken words in the video - just a song of techno-music playing during the slide show. No closed captioning is available.

View and download our infographic, which illustrates the prevalence of African American degree holders among the 137 detailed major groups. Find out what the 10 highest and lowest earnings were by major.

Download the infographic