As the fall semester begins, incoming freshmen and transfers are only just settling into college life at Pepperdine. Some new Waves may still be undeclared or undecided about what major to study.
Here is the skinny on all the most popular majors at Pepperdine, as well as the ones with the biggest payoffs down the line.
Seaver College offers 39 majors and 38 minors within eight disciplines to the roughly 3,000 undergraduate students of Pepperdine. According to the Office of Admissions at Seaver College, the three most popular major divisions are Business Administration, Communication and Natural Science.
The Business Administration Division is home to roughly 700 undergraduate students; the most popular major is Business Administration, which pulls in 400. The Communication Division houses roughly 650 undergraduates with the most popular majors being Advertising and Public Relations, which, along with Integrated Marketing Communication, comprises half of the total undergraduates in the division.
The third most popular division at Seaver is the Natural Science Division, home to majors from Physics to Chemistry to Sports Medicine, but Biology is king on campus.
The nonprofit organization Collegeboard.org breaks down the statistics for bachelor’s degrees at Pepperdine as 31 percent business and marketing, 18 percent communications and journalism, 12 percent social science, seven percent interdisciplinary studies, 6 percent visual and performing arts and 5 percent psychology.
However, according to a new study by the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, the most popular undergraduate majors in the country are not necessarily the most lucrative, and technical degrees draw in the highest salaries.
According to the study, the major with the highest median earning is Petroleum Engineering, at $120,000 a year. Following that are Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration and Mathematics and Computers with $105,000 and $98,000, respectively. Aerospace Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering fall close behind with $87,000, $86,000 and $85,000 each. Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering make $82,000. Last on the list fall Mechanical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering and mining and Mineral Engineering at $80,000 a year.
The study, which draws information and salary statistics from the 2009 U.S. Census, confirms that technical degrees within the sciences (dominated by specialized engineering majors and pharmaceutical sciences), earn an average of $52,300 more than liberal arts degrees such as psychology or theology.
Opposite to the top-10 median earning majors are the majors that barely scratch the $40,000 line. The major with the lowest median earning was calculated to be Counseling and Psychology with $29,000. That is followed by Early Childhood Education with $36,000. Theology and Religious Vocations tied with Human Services and Community Organizations with $38,000 each. Social Work is right behind with $39,000, and Drama and Theater Arts, Studio Arts, Communication Disorders Sciences and Services, Visual and Performing Arts, and health and medical preparatory programs each make $40,000.
Those lower-paying majors fall under the umbrella of liberal arts degrees that tend to be more popular than the demanding technical science degrees, even though they earn less money on average.
But this doesn’t mean that everyone should be jumping on the sciences boat: Whether it’s a degree in engineering or theater, people with a bachelor’s degree will earn more in their lifetimes than their non-college-educated counterparts.
