The College Majors Graduates Regret the Most (and Least)

If you got a college do-over, would you stick with the same major?

As USA Today reports, the Federal Reserve Board featured data regarding that hypothetical in a May 2024 report called “Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2023” [PDF]. Of the 11,400 survey respondents, 44 percent of those whose most recent degree was in social and behavioral sciences—such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology—said they would now choose a different undergraduate field of study if they had the chance.

That makes it the most regret-filled educational program, followed by a two-way tie between humanities/arts (with majors like English and history) and life sciences (think anything related to biology, among other subjects). Both categories garnered a 43-percent rate of regret.

On the other end of the spectrum is engineering: Only 27 percent of participants with an engineering degree said they’d go a different direction for their undergraduate degree if they could. Additionally, only 31 percent of computer/information sciences degree-holders rue their decision.

The Federal Reserve Board pointed out a couple of noteworthy caveats to the report. One is that people were asked to identify their most recent educational program, but then answer whether they regret their undergraduate field of study. This means that anyone with higher than a bachelor’s degree is reflected in the data under the educational program of their highest degree, which doesn’t necessarily match their undergraduate field of study. 

Say, for example, that you have a bachelor’s degree in art history and a master’s degree in math. In the report, you’ll go in the physical sciences/math bucket—when what you actually regret is your humanities/arts degree. All that said, the Fed also crunched the numbers on respondents with just a bachelor’s degree, and the results were more or less comparable.

The other caveat is that survey participants weren’t asked to specify what they would study instead of their original choice. That means it’s entirely possible that some would choose another field within the same program. For example, regretful anthropology majors might not all wish they pursued computer science—maybe some just wish they went with a different social science. To put it another way, the report suggests that some people regret choosing fields of study within social and behavioral sciences, not that they regret choosing that educational program.

See the full breakdown below, and learn more about the findings here.

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