31 Worst Paying College Majors: 2017

Slideshow May 22, 2017 at 05:27 AM
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Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cooks, clergy or child care specialists, at least if they want to find high-paying jobs once they graduate college, according to findings of PayScale.com in its 2016-2017 College Salary Report. Of the 336 majors ranked, those involving caring for people or feeding them averaged some of the lowest starting salaries. But take heart, young graduates: The job landscape is full of CEOs, TV chefs and even investment managers who eschewed better-paying math and science majors and still climbed well beyond the average pay levels shown here. (Related: 30 Best Paying College Majors: 2017 and 20 Best Paying Jobs for College Business Majors: 2017) The rankings above are based on data collected by PayScale from 983 universities and include graduates with bachelor's degrees in 336 disciplines. The universities surveyed include 85% of U.S. schools with an enrollment of more than 5,000 and 62% of schools with enrollment over 1,000, using a sample size of 1.4 million "degree holding, full-time, civilian employees working in the U.S." Check out the worst paying college majors of 2017 in the carousel above. --- Related on ThinkAdvisor: