while a growing number of current and prospective college students don’t believe the degree is worth the price tag on ‘The Bottom Line.’
It depends on what a student majors in, but for the great majority of fields, it's financially advantageous to get a bachelor's degree. One major that I remember has historically been near the bottom of the field and had a negative return on investment has been theology. There are a bunch of websites that will list approximate return-on-investments.
kagis
Here's the first site that comes up for me. They don't have a complete list, but they do have the highest and lowest RoI majors.
https://educationdata.org/college-degree-roi
Bachelor’s Degree ROI by Major
The average return on investment for a bachelor’s degree can be vastly different from one major to another. Variations also exist based on the degree holder’s personal circumstances, such as age, location, gender, etc.
- The most cost-efficient degree is a business degree in finance, with a lifetime ROI of 1,842.38%.
- Computer and information sciences (1,752.59%),(#1) ((#3) #4) computer engineering (1,743.81%), and economics (1,707.80%) also have high returns.
- Despite having a lower ROI, a computer engineer’s lifetime returns exceed a business finance major’s by $1.182 million.
- A Bachelor’s of Education offers the lowest lifetime ROI at -55.43%, representing a $149,407 loss in degree-based earnings.
- Other negative-value degrees include liberal arts and humanities (-42.78%) and family and consumer science (-38.95%).