Do Political Science Majors Succeed in the Labor Market?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite some stakeholders’ concerns about the practical value of an undergraduate degree in political science, our graduates actually do quite well in the labor market. Based on analysis of a sample of 3.4 million college graduates (including 86,000 in political science) from the 2009–2014 American Community Surveys, our majors earn two-thirds more than demographically similar high school graduates if they stop with bachelor’s degrees, but they are among the most likely to obtain graduate degrees, especially in law. Only engineering, economics, computer science, and health science majors make at least 10% more than our graduates, who make nearly as much as those who major in business and 10% to 25% more than those who major in most other social sciences and humanities. Political science majors have relatively high unemployment rates in their 20s, however, and may end up in very different occupations than they imagined when they chose political science.