RANKING · MAJORS

The major you pick swings your lifetime ROI by a million dollars

Same degree, same four years — but the field you pick swings your thirty-year payoff by $1.24M. Two major categories come out negative on average, and a third of the graduates in several popular ones end up behind. Ranked by FREOPP’s own published lifetime-ROI figure, across every U.S. bachelor’s program. No school named. No villain. Just the math.

Worst category

−$112K

Philosophy and Religious Studies

Best category

+$1.13M

Engineering

Ranked by FREOPP’s own published “Lifetime return on investment” figure · FREOPP 2021 · bachelor’s degrees · cohort-weighted · names no institution.

  1. 1 Philosophy and Religious Studies −$111,915 59.8% underwater
  2. 2 Visual Arts and Music −$68,014 67.9% underwater
  3. 3 Psychology +$68,424 27.9% underwater
  4. 4 Life Sciences and Biology +$106,017 31.5% underwater
  5. 5 Education +$121,114 23.1% underwater
  6. 6 English, Liberal Arts, and Humanities +$144,506 27.5% underwater
  7. 7 Social Sciences excluding Economics +$183,047 19.1% underwater
  8. 8 Miscellaneous +$189,612 30.1% underwater
  9. 9 Public Administration and Human Services +$199,831 15.6% underwater
  10. 10 Communications and Journalism +$228,465 16.5% underwater
  11. 11 Agriculture and Natural Resources +$303,357 15.8% underwater
  12. 12 Physical Sciences +$404,220 6.8% underwater
  13. 13 Business and Management +$578,915 1.5% underwater
  14. 14 Mathematics and Statistics +$593,764 3.2% underwater
  15. 15 Economics +$638,790 2.1% underwater
  16. 16 Health and Nursing +$775,786 6.8% underwater
  17. 17 Transportation, Construction, and Architecture +$816,671 0.8% underwater
  18. 18 Computer and Information Sciences +$936,339 2.5% underwater
  19. 19 Engineering +$1,132,553 0% underwater
How this is computed (and what it isn’t)

Cohort-weighted mean of FREOPP's own published per-program lifetime-ROI figure, grouped by FREOPP 'Program category', bachelor's degrees only. Names no institution. See ADR-0031. “Lifetime ROI” is FREOPP’s estimate of the increase in lifetime earnings from the degree, net of its cost — their number, not ours. We group their per-program rows into FREOPP’s 19 major categories and cohort-weight by graduate count, so a category’s figure reflects where students actually are.

A category mean hides a wide spread — a high-ROI engineering specialty and a low-ROI one sit in the same bucket, and an individual program at a specific school can land far from its category. This ranks fields, not schools or people. The honest read is the swing: the decision moves the number by $1.24M, and the “% underwater” column is the share of graduates whose own ROI came out below zero.

↓ Download the data (CSV) · Free to cite with attribution. · Methodology

Cite this:

LE TEEN (2026). “Bachelor’s major categories ranked by lifetime ROI.” Data: FREOPP 2021. https://le-teen.com/rankings/worst-roi-majors
Embed the lookup widget on your site

Free. One select, the FREOPP number, attribution back here. Counselor sites, PF blogs, school newspapers — go ahead.

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Questions

What is the worst-ROI college major?
By FREOPP’s published lifetime return-on-investment figure (2021), Philosophy and Religious Studies ranks lowest among bachelor’s major categories — a cohort-weighted mean of −$111,915, with 59.8% of its graduates coming out below zero. This ranks the field, not any school: a specific program at a specific institution can land far from its category mean.
Do any college majors have a negative return on investment?
Yes. 2 of 19 bachelor’s major categories have a negative mean lifetime ROI in FREOPP’s 2021 data, and in several others a large share of graduates still finish behind — 59.8% in the worst category. A positive category average can still hide individual programs that lose money.
How much does your choice of major affect lifetime earnings?
The swing from the worst category to the best is $1.24M: Philosophy and Religious Studies at −$111,915 versus Engineering at +$1,132,553. Same degree level, same four years — the field you pick is the single largest lever in the figure.
Does this ranking name specific colleges?
No. It ranks FREOPP’s 19 major categories by their own published lifetime-ROI number, cohort-weighted across every U.S. bachelor’s program — it names no institution. To see how a specific school moves the number, the LE TEEN calculator runs the same math per school.