COLLEGES WHERE MAJORS POPULAR WITH BLACK STUDENTS PAY WELL.

• Date: 01 September 2020

THE GOOD NEWS: THERE ARE SOME. THE BAD NEWS: THERE AREN'T MANY.

In the United States, there's a direct correlation between the average earnings of a college major and what percentage of the major's students are Black. In the highest-paying disciplines--subjects such as computer science, chemical engineering, and finance--Black students are a significantly smaller share of recent graduates than they are nationwide (in the case of those three, the share is below 5 percent, compared to a national share of roughly 10 percent). For the lowest-paying majors, the opposite is true. The subject with the highest share of Black graduates--health and medical administration--leads to first-year average incomes that are tens of thousands of dollars less than finance, and roughly half of what computer science and chemical engineering students go on to earn.

There are many reasons for this correlation, ranging from high school segregation to the relative emphasis these subjects place on bringing about positive social change (see Daniel Block, "Why STEM Needs Social Justice," page 26). It has spurred intense efforts by both policymakers and many universities to graduate more people of color from high-paying fields.

These endeavors are important for the financial wellbeing of these communities and for the social well-being of the United States. But it's also important that institutions respect the choices Black students make for themselves, and high-paying fields are far from the only ones worth studying. Indeed, the fields that Black students disproportionately graduate from are essential to both day-to-day life and academic inquiry. Without social workers, the U.S. safety net system would collapse. Sociology leads to a plethora of worthy careers, from political advocacy to urban planning to sociological research itself. This means it's critical that we work not just to graduate more Black students from STEM majors. It means we need to figure out how to make sure the subjects more Black people already study lead to better-paying jobs.

To that end, the Washington Monthly has gathered newly available data from the Department of Education to examine at which specific colleges the majors (or "programs") known for high Black enrollment, like social work, lead to above-average earnings. We started by looking at the 38 most popular majors in America and identifying the four with the largest share of recent Black graduates: health and medical administration (26.1 percent of recent graduates); social work (22 percent); criminal justice (20 percent); and sociology (18.6 percent). Next, to make sure we were working with a large enough sample size, we eliminated every school whose program graduated fewer than 50 students in the past two years and then, among these schools, calculated the median first-year earnings for each of the four programs...