There are some stories that we tell. These include that we have increasing non-white and non-male participation in many college majors. Here I examine the 25 most popular majors in the 2024 ACS data and I split it up into older and younger cohorts, delineated by age 40 (unweighted).
Race
Below-upper is the distribution of race by college major for people older than 40 years of age, or who mostly graduated more than 15 years ago. It largely conforms to my biases. There were a higher proportion of Asian people in the natural sciences and engineering, but also in Economics. I didn’t really have strong priors about the proportions of black people, but they composed the highest proportions in Criminal Justice, Business, and Liberal arts. Contrary to my expectations, Elementary Education had the highest proportion of white people. Below-lower is the cohort that is age 40 and younger. The entire distribution is similar, but less white.
Some of the differences between the two groups are hard to see, so I’ve included those below. What are some general takeaways? 1) There are lower proportions of white people among all degrees. 2) There are higher proportions of Asian people in every field except mechanical engineering, which is unchanged. 3) Whether black people compose a greater proportion depends on the major.
In the younger cohort, black people are now a greater share of bachelor’s in chemistry, Fine Arts, Physical Fitness, Biology, and Liberal Arts. But black people also now compose lower proportions of people with bachelor’s in business management, Criminal Justice, and Nursing.
Interestingly, the whitest college major, Elementary Education, has experienced the least change in racial diversity and has had a decline in the proportion of black degree holders. Economics ties with Sociology with for the 4th lowest proportion of white people among younger graduates at 61%. Most of the criticism in economics has not been due to racial imbalance, but rather due to sex imbalances.
Sex
Because sex has two categories in the census data, I can fit everything into the single graph below. It illustrates the sex split by major among people older than 40 vs the younger cohort. The distribution mostly conforms to my priors. The biggest surprises to me among the older cohort are that Finance and Math were as popular among females as they were. Those are two fields in which I though men would compose a higher proportion, but Math is within a stone’s throw of an even split. Among the younger cohort of majors, the vast majority of degrees are more female now, though Economics is still around 2/3 male.
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