College majors: what's hot.

• Position: GRAPH: NATIONAL - Graph

As the article "Major Dilemma" reports, a number of school districts around the country are now requiring high school students to select majors.

While there isn't a lot of information yet on which majors are the most popular in high school, there's plenty of data on college majors: Some are experiencing more rapid growth than others, as the graph at right indicates.

[GRAPHIC OMITTED]

ANALYZE THE GRAPH

(1) Which two majors saw identical increases in the percentage of degrees awarded between 1991 and 2005?

(2) The graph shows that the number of psychology degrees increased by 46 percent between 1991 and 2005. In 2005, 85,600 degrees were awarded in psychology. About how many psychology degrees were awarded in 1991? Slightly more than

a 58,600

b 56,500

c 53,600

d 50,500

(3) Not all majors showed increases. One example. The 2005 figure for engineering degrees, not shown, is 36.5 percentage points below that of Hearth Professions. By what percentage did engineering degrees decrease between 1991 and 2005?

a 4.5%

b 3.5%

c 2.5%

d 1.5%

(4) The Agriculture/ Natural. Resources figure is just a littte more than 30 percentage points above the figure for Journalism/ Communications and

(5) Some popular fields today barely existed in the 1990s. Leisure/Fitness Studies, which is not shown, is an example. Its 1991-2005 increase was 315 percentage points above Computer/Information Sciences. What was the percentage increase for Leisure/ Fitness Studies?

a 410%

b 420%

c 430%

d 440%

(6)...