Choosing a college major feels huge at eighteen. It’s one of those decisions made with genuine enthusiasm, incomplete information, and a time pressure that most teenagers are completely unprepared for. The trouble is, the consequences take years to fully reveal themselves, and by then, the student loans are already real.
One in three college graduates lament their education choices, according to a survey of 1,000 graduates conducted by USA Today Blueprint, which found that roughly a third wished they had taken a different approach or not attended college at all. A separate ZipRecruiter survey found that nearly half of all job-seeking degree holders regret their college majors. These aren’t fringe opinions from a few disappointed outliers. They reflect a broader pattern that shows up consistently across multiple large-scale surveys. Here are the seven degrees that produce the most regret within five years of graduation.
1. Journalism
Journalism ranks as the single most regretted major according to ZipRecruiter’s survey data, with an overwhelming share of graduates saying they would not choose it again. The reasons are hard to ignore. The number of journalism jobs has been declining for decades and will continue to fall, with projected losses driven primarily by newspaper downsizing and closures.
Only about fifteen percent of journalism majors actually become editors, news analysts, reporters, or correspondents early in their careers. The overall decline has been profound across the decades, with a roughly eighty percent drop in newspaper industry jobs when comparing the annual average from 1990 to 2024. That kind of structural collapse in a field leaves graduates scrambling for work that barely resembles what they studied, and the financial reality hits fast.
2. Sociology
Sociology is among the most lamented majors, sitting near the top of regret rankings alongside journalism and liberal arts. Sociology and anthropology are undeniably interesting subjects to study, but people with these degrees tend to struggle with finding jobs in today’s employment market. The degree is broad by design, which sounds appealing in theory but creates real friction when it comes time to answer the question: “What exactly do you do with this?”
Sociology graduates face an unemployment rate of around 6.7 percent, and the degree tends to offer mid-career salaries around seventy thousand dollars, placing graduates on the lower end of the earnings spectrum. Among the top reasons graduates in this field report regret is that the degree offers few job opportunities or quality pay, and the skills from the degree aren’t valued in the workplace. Five years out, many sociology graduates find themselves in roles that never required their degree in the first place.
3. Liberal Arts and General Studies
Liberal arts and general studies ties with sociology in ZipRecruiter’s regret rankings, with nearly three quarters of graduates in this category saying they’d choose differently if given the chance. Nine of the fifteen most struggling majors in recent labor market analyses map to the humanities, arts, or social sciences, dealing a significant blow to the argument that liberal arts fields adequately prepare graduates for the job market.
Education analysts have begun using the term “gradflation” to describe a growing problem in which too many liberal arts graduates are chasing too few well-paying jobs, thereby lowering the value of their four-year degrees. Fields like English, history, and liberal arts show moderate mid-career salaries paired with above-average unemployment rates. The degree may build real skills, but the market’s failure to price those skills adequately is what eventually drives the regret.
4. Social and Behavioral Sciences (Including Psychology and Anthropology)
Nearly half of graduates whose most recent degree was in social and behavioral sciences, including sociology, anthropology, and psychology, said they would now choose a different undergraduate field of study, making it the most regret-filled educational program according to Federal Reserve survey data, tied with humanities and arts at a rate of roughly forty-three to forty-four percent. Psychology in particular draws students with genuine passion, only to leave many of them confronting a labor market that requires a graduate degree for most meaningful clinical roles.
It’s hard to find a job without an advanced degree in addition to a bachelor’s, survey respondents reported, which explains why a significant share of this category regretted their choice. Anthropology majors specifically face an unemployment rate of nine point four percent, the highest among the twenty fields analyzed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as of May 2025. For students who entered these fields expecting a clear career path, the reality arrives quickly and it stings.
5. Communications
Communications topped the list alongside journalism, sociology, and education in ZipRecruiter’s survey of more than fifteen hundred college graduates who were looking for a job. The degree is often described as versatile, which is true in a limited sense. The problem is that versatility without depth is hard to monetize. A communications graduate competes for the same roles as virtually every other humanities major, without having the specific credential that any particular employer actually asked for.
Among communications graduates, those who are happy with their field earn roughly one and a half times more than those who would choose a different major. That internal earnings gap tells a quiet story: outcomes within this degree vary enormously depending on which specific skills a graduate developed, which industries they managed to break into, and frankly, how well they networked. For every communications graduate who lands well, several others end up in roles that have little to do with what they studied.
6. Education
Education appears in the Federal Reserve’s most-lamented majors list, with roughly thirty-eight percent of graduates saying they’d choose a different field if they could do it over. Roughly a third of education graduates in ZipRecruiter’s data reported regret, citing low pay, low job satisfaction, and limited career advancement opportunities. The passion that draws people to teaching is real, but the financial reality of the profession collides hard with the cost of the degree that got them there.
A 2023 College Major Satisfaction Survey found that about thirty percent of education majors struggled with job availability while roughly half struggled with their interest in the field as a whole. Education degrees have been dwindling for decades, according to Pew Research. The gap between the idealism of training to become an educator and the exhausting, underpaid day-to-day reality of the job is one of the clearest examples of degree-related regret playing out in predictable and well-documented ways.
7. Fine Arts
Many fine arts graduates report high levels of job dissatisfaction and low income. About half of arts majors are most disappointed with their income, according to the 2023 College Major Satisfaction Survey by Dreambound. The arts degree is, in many ways, the degree that most clearly separates passion from profession. Students entering fine arts programs often know the market is difficult. What they don’t always anticipate is how completely the financial pressure of student debt reshapes their relationship with work they once loved.
Fine arts graduates face an unemployment rate of around seven percent among recent graduates, and despite the moderate mid-career salaries in the range of seventy thousand dollars, job security remains elusive. STEM and healthcare majors report the highest career satisfaction, with the vast majority saying their degrees helped their careers, while among those who studied the arts, humanities, or social sciences, only about half said the same. That gap between groups is significant and, for many fine arts graduates five years out from their cap and gown moment, deeply personal.
None of these degrees are without value, and the regret data doesn’t mean everyone who studied journalism or education made a mistake. As one ZipRecruiter economist noted, students may be drawn to these fields for genuine reasons beyond salary, but once out in the workforce and managing real bills, priorities sharpen considerably. What the data consistently shows is that regret tends to follow degrees where the gap between expectations and economic reality is largest. Knowing that before signing the enrollment papers is worth more than most orientation presentations ever let on.
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