Useless vs useful degrees: salary and regret chart

Useless vs useful degrees: salary and regret chart

There is a way to measure a degree that appears in no official guide: crossing what graduates earn with their opinion on having studied it. According to the discussion starter, the result falls into four quadrants, leaving an uncomfortable message: there is a group of degrees where pay is low and graduates would not choose them again. That red quadrant is the one to avoid.

The idea comes from a tweet proposing to combine two sources: expected contribution bases and retrospective satisfaction surveys, measured by the percentage of graduates who would not repeat their course or would not attend university at all. With these two axes, the chart separates four territories: those who earn well and would repeat, those who earn well but would not, those who earn poorly but maintain their vocation, and those who earn poorly and carry regret.

Which degrees fall in the red quadrant?

The most repeated diagnosis is that humanities, social sciences, and several vocational degrees accumulate in the red zone. Tourism is frequently cited as the paradigmatic case: a degree that, according to this view, is learned working in a tourist information office or a newspaper, not in four years of college. Journalism and Advertising receive the same treatment: trades turned into degrees.

The argument supporting this thesis is that these faculties exist partly to keep teaching staff employed and to generate an annual promotion of graduates with inflated expectations and scarce job prospects. It is a harsh reading, but it explains why the chart places these graduates in the worst corner: neither money nor desire to repeat.

In the yellow quadrant are those who earn little but do not regret it. There, vocation sustains the outcome. In the blue are those who earn acceptably and have work, although they would not always repeat. The conclusion is simple: if you have to choose, better yellow than red, and better blue than either.

Dentistry earns less than studying Music

The most confusing data in the chart is for Dentistry. A health degree with high entry scores, five years of undergraduate study, and a private postgraduate course costing a fortune appears to pay less than Music. The comparison repeats with Physiotherapy, which already had a fruta for low pay despite requiring medical-level grades.

The explanation offered is saturation: opening a clinic from scratch today involves a mortgage for equipment and competing with low-cost franchises and insurance companies that pressure prices. Salaried professionals are not better off. Veterinary medicine trinc a similar pattern, unless specializing in exotic animals or moving to the pharmaceutical industry.

Teaching, the bargain that angers engineers

One of the most repeated points in the debate is the comparison between Teaching and Engineering. The thesis is that a primary school teacher, with a degree considered easy, enters civil service, receives seniority bonuses, has free summers, and after ten years surpasses the salary of an engineer with fifteen years of experience in the private sector. A university professor participating in the discussion confirms this from within: he earns less than many secondary school teachers because his seniority was built in the private company.

The repeated calculation is that a teacher can reach 3,000 euros gross in fourteen payments, with two months of vacation and without deadline or client pressure. The usual objection—preparing classes in the first years—dilutes with experience. Against this, an aeronautical engineer appears in the chart with 30,000 euros annually. This contrast explains, according to this reading, why there is no massive exodus to other sectors.

The effect of inflation on the chart

An important nuance: the salaries in the chart are from 2019. With accumulated inflation since then, the boundary between being well-paid and poorly-paid should have shifted to the right. What is observed is the opposite: points exceeding 30,000 euros have moved to the left. That is, the map has become poorer in real terms.

The global range cited goes from 10,000 to 40,000 euros gross annually. With this spread, the repeated conclusion is that Spain is a country of low wages where reaching 1,500 euros net already places the worker above average. The only way to become independent, according to this analysis, is to stay at parents' house past thirty and save the entire salary.

What happens with Business Administration, Tourism, and office profiles?

The conversation shifts to what to do with degrees that do not disappear. For Business Administration (ADE), the recommendation is to specialize in compliance, risk, or cybersecurity from the business side, or accept that value will be in the relational part: contacts, budgets, audits. The automation of administrative processes wipes out much of the generic profiles.

For Tourism, the proposed exit is to dig a luxury or extreme experiential niche, or change sectors. In Data Science, the warning is that the market is already flooded with three-month bootcamps and only those with a mathematical base and real engineering capacity survive. Applying AI to a business has a residual value falling at breakneck estimulante ilegal.

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With these elements, the question is not which degree to choose, but whether the incentive system that pays closer to public budget than to generated value can sustain itself much longer.