photo by: Mike Yoder

A trio of graduates leap in unison after entering Memorial Stadium during the KU commencement on Sunday, May 17, 2015.

“I got into French Lit for the money,” — said no one ever.

To pick on a major that got made an example of in Wednesday’s Heard on the Hill, we wrote that graduates’ salaries revealed in Obama’s new College Scorecard really aren’t that revealing because they’re just averages. Results of a new study KU shared this week back up the point that, indeed, it matters more what you major in. The study confirms that lifetime earnings are higher with a college degree, but the decision about what to study is more important, said ChangHwan Kim, KU associate professor of sociology and the study’s lead author, according to a KU news release. It found the most lucrative majors are medicine or dentistry, business, law and STEM degrees.

This is the first study to use “nationally representative survey data matched to longitudinal earnings data spanning a long stretch of the same person’s life to document how lifetime earnings vary by field of study and how lifetime earnings change by getting an advanced degree in different fields,” KU said. Authors used personal income tax data and tracked the earnings of the same individuals over 20 years, then estimated the long-term effects of fields of study.

One reason this study is useful to students is that it can help them determine for which fields investing in graduate school will pay off earnings-wise, Kim said, as level of education doesn’t necessarily translate to more money for all majors.

photo by: Mike Yoder

A trio of graduates leap in unison after entering Memorial Stadium during the KU commencement on Sunday, May 17, 2015.

Liberal arts and humanities leaders at KU and everywhere these days are clamoring to communicate how such degrees help us understand our world and give graduates important job skills — and of course they do. Kim, in KU’s press release, acknowledges there are many nonmonetary benefits to education, and “a liberal arts education is good, but it doesn’t necessarily transform into a high salary.”

Here are the top 14 fields of study for lifetime earnings, according to the study:

Men

1. Medicine or dentistry graduate degree – $5.25 million
2. Business graduate degree – $2.91 million
3. Law graduate degree – $2.9 million
4. STEM graduate degree – $2.82 million
5. STEM bachelor’s degree – $2.66 million
6. Business bachelor’s degree – $2.26 million
7. Health science bachelor’s degree – $2.11 million
8. Social science graduate degree – $1.98 million
9. Liberal arts/humanities bachelor’s degree – $1.88 million
10. Social science bachelor’s degree – $1.86 million
11. Education master’s degree – $1.86 million
12. Liberal arts/humanities master’s degree – $1.81 million
13. Education bachelor’s degree – $1.53 million
14. High school graduate – $1.49 million

Women

1. Medicine or dentistry graduate degree – $2.12 million
2. Business graduate degree – $1.89 million
3. Law graduate degree – $1.77 million
4. STEM bachelor’s degree – $1.76 million
5. STEM graduate degree – $1.74 million
6. Education graduate degree – $1.5 million
7. Health science bachelor’s degree – $1.44 million
8. Social science graduate degree – $1.39 million
9. Business bachelor’s degree – $1.38 million
10. Liberal arts/humanities master’s degree – $1.19 million
11. Social science bachelor’s degree – $1.05 million
12. Education bachelor’s degree – $1 million
13. Liberal arts/humanities bachelor’s degree – $0.98 million
14. High school graduate – $0.73 million.

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Footnotes

• A gift of land to KU: If you love reading the land transfers list the Journal-World publishes each week in the Hometown Lawrence section — and really, who doesn’t? — you may have noticed that KU Endowment just transferred some vacant property to KU, according to Friday’s paper. KU Endowment confirmed for me that this is the West Campus tract on which KU plans to build a greenhouse to support the soil microbiology research of Foundation Distinguished Professor James Bever, who’s coming to KU in January.

Here’s a story I wrote about the greenhouse when the Kansas Board of Regents OK’d it in June. (And a confession: I don’t read the land transfers. But my editor Chad Lawhorn does.)

• KU student out of running: Thursday night the Lawrence City Commission narrowed the pool of applicants for a vacant Commission seat from 14 to 12. KU student Kolbe Murray, a junior from Lawrence, didn’t make the cut.

• Update on Delta State slaying: The man suspected of fatally shooting Delta State University assistant professor of history Ethan Schmidt in his campus office Monday morning is a fellow Delta State teacher named Shannon Lamb — who allegedly also killed his girlfriend before killing himself the same day. Here’s the latest, most comprehensive media report I could find on the case as of Friday, but so far there seems to be no explanation for why Lamb targeted Schmidt.

Paul Kelton, Schmidt’s doctoral adviser at KU, shared comments for my story on Monday. Here’s a few more from former KU history professor Jonathan Earle, recalling Schmidt as a promising and enthusiastic scholar who, “in his short time on the planet already thought deeply about history, and discovery, and what makes Americans tick.”

Ethan A. Schmidt

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Contact me

Ask me about my favorite French literature, or send KU news tips via email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187 or on Twitter @saramarieshep.