Every College Major Ranked by Regret Rate: What 50,000 Graduates Would Do Differently

If you could go back and choose your college major again, would you pick the same one? For 44 percent of American graduates, the answer is no. That is not a fringe statistic from a niche survey. That comes from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, one of the most comprehensive datasets on graduate outcomes in the country.

Nearly half of all college graduates wish they had studied something different. That is a staggering failure rate for a decision that costs an average of $120,000 in tuition and shapes decades of career trajectory. We pulled data from the Federal Reserve survey, ZipRecruiter's graduate outcomes survey, the National Alumni Career Mobility Survey, and PayScale's compensation database to build the most complete regret-rate ranking available.

Here is what the data reveals about which majors graduates love, which ones they regret, and what separates the two groups.

The Full Regret Rate Rankings

Highest Regret (Would NOT Choose Same Major Again)

Lowest Regret (WOULD Choose Same Major Again)

The pattern is impossible to miss. Majors with high regret rates are characterized by low salaries, limited direct career paths, and vague connections between coursework and employment. Majors with low regret rates have high salaries, clear career pathways, and strong employer demand.

Our detailed most regretted college majors analysis digs deeper into individual major breakdowns, and the highest-paying majors ranking shows why salary is the single strongest predictor of major satisfaction.

What Drives Major Regret

The data reveals four primary drivers of major regret, and they are not what most students expect.

Driver 1: Salary Below Expectations (43% of Regretful Graduates)

The number one reason graduates regret their major is not hating their job or finding the work boring. It is making less money than they expected. Students enter college with a set of assumptions about what their degree will be worth. When reality falls short by $20,000 or $30,000 a year, regret follows fast.

The starting salary data by major is one of the most important data points a student can review before declaring. The gap between the highest and lowest-paid majors is over $50,000 in starting salary alone. Over a career, that gap compounds into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Driver 2: Poor Job Availability (34% of Regretful Graduates)

Some majors produce far more graduates than the job market can absorb. Psychology, for example, awards over 120,000 bachelor's degrees per year in the United States, but the number of entry-level positions that directly require a psychology bachelor's is a small fraction of that. The unemployment rate differences between majors are dramatic and persistent.

Driver 3: Lack of Career Direction (28% of Regretful Graduates)

General degrees like liberal arts, general studies, and broad social science programs often leave graduates unsure what career they are qualified for. The degree gives them knowledge but not a clear professional identity. Understanding the relationship between your major and your career path before choosing can prevent this disconnect.

Driver 4: Skills Underutilization (24% of Regretful Graduates)

Many graduates end up in jobs that do not use what they studied. An English major working in insurance sales. A history major doing data entry. The degree and the job have no meaningful connection, which breeds a particular kind of regret: the feeling that four years and six figures were wasted on knowledge that went unused.

The Common Thread: Bad Decision-Making Inputs

Here is the most important finding in the regret data: the graduates who regret their major overwhelmingly chose based on one of three inputs that are unreliable predictors of satisfaction.

First, they chose based on interest in the subject without researching career outcomes. Loving history does not mean you will love the career paths a history degree leads to, especially when those careers pay $56,000 at midcareer. Understanding what history graduates actually do is essential context.

Second, they chose based on parental pressure or social expectation. "My dad is a lawyer so I went pre-law" or "business seemed like the safe choice" are among the most common explanations from regretful graduates. The parent's guide to helping with this decision can help families navigate this dynamic without projecting.

Third, they chose based on ease. Avoiding hard courses is a natural instinct, but the hardest majors are also the ones with the lowest regret rates. Difficulty and satisfaction are positively correlated because hard programs develop rare skills that the market values.

How to Make a Decision You Will Not Regret

The formula is not complicated. It is just rarely followed.

First, assess your cognitive strengths objectively. Not what you think you are good at. Not what your friends say. An actual assessment of how you process information, solve problems, and engage with different types of work. Your personality and cognitive style predict major satisfaction far better than your interests alone.

Second, research career outcomes for every major you are considering. Starting salary, midcareer salary, unemployment rate, job growth projections, and AI displacement risk. This data is publicly available. Most students never look at it. The degree tier list provides a clear ranking framework.

Third, talk to actual graduates. Not professors, not admissions counselors, not career services offices. Find people who graduated five to ten years ago with the degree you are considering and ask them honestly whether they would do it again. Their answers will be more valuable than any brochure.

Fourth, have a specific career target, not just a subject interest. "I want to be a nurse" is a career target. "I like science" is a subject interest. One leads to a clear educational path with measurable outcomes. The other leads to a vague degree with uncertain results. Our guide to how to choose a major walks through this entire framework.