Studies show what hapless college grads learn the hard way: Some of their university degrees aren’t worth the big bucks they paid for them. That goes for graduate students as well as undergrads. According to a study recently released by the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center at American University, (originally based on research from the Yale Tobin Center for Economic Policy), ...

Graduates gather as they attend the commencement ceremony at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday, May 29, 2025.

RICK FRIEDMAN/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Studies show what hapless college grads learn the hard way: Some of their university degrees aren’t worth the big bucks they paid for them.

That goes for graduate students as well as undergrads.

According to a study recently released by the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center at American University, (originally based on research from the Yale Tobin Center for Economic Policy), degrees in social work, psychology and curriculum and instruction have the potential to yield a zero-to-negative return on investment, considering the full cost that goes into earning the degree.

“A graduate degree can benefit you financially in some circumstances, but it is a very risky proposition,” Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Post.

When you’re shelling out $35,000+ per semester, “risk” is an ugly word.

Unless you get that grad degree in medicine, law or pharmacy. The study showed that these have the highest return on investment. And with the amounts of money in play, yes, a college or post-graduate degree has to be examined in terms of ROI.

Researchers found that salaries nearly tripled for those with medical doctorate degrees and shot up by over two-thirds for those who earned a doctorate in pharmacy, the New York Post reported.

Graduates are finding the going just as tough. A Federal Reserve Bank of New York study earlier this year found that anthropology majors had the highest rate of unemployment at 7.9%. After anthropology, the majors with the highest unemployment were: computer engineering (7.8%), fine arts (7.7%), performing arts (7.0%), computer science (7.0%), architecture (6.8%), art history (6.7%), physics (6.6%), early childhood education (6.6%) and environmental studies (6.3%).

A fancy degree and no career prospects means recent grads are taking any job that will hire them. They join the pool of the underemployed, which the study defined as “the share of graduates working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree.”

The degrees with underemployment rates greater than 50% — were fine arts (58.9%), leisure and hospitality (58.1%), agriculture (57.1%), anthropology (55.3%), liberal arts (54.6%), foreign language (54.0%), animal and plant sciences (53.5%), and communications (53.0%).

Fine arts may be a fun, intellectually stimulating major, as are anthropology and liberal arts, but nothing bursts a bubble as fast as labor market reality.

“You want to make sure you are working with all the information,” said Cooper.

That’s the key, and that information deep-dive should be top of mind for high school students. The annual college tour taken by prospective students and their parents should be as much about affordability and long-term financial stability as it is about amenities and dorm life.

Former President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness spree illuminated the financial mess too many graduates find themselves in: enormous loans to pay back, wages that don’t keep up, and milestones such as homeownership out of reach because of the crushing debt.

The answer isn’t passing the buck to future taxpayers in the form of “forgiven” student loans, it’s arming students and their families with the financial knowledge to make smart decisions with their career investment.

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