First and foremost let’s get something clear, there is no such thing as an “easy” college degree. Even after all of the TVC’s you have seen promising you a degree from the comfort of your living room. There is no such thing as an easy college degree. It doesn’t matter if you’re pursuing a degree at an online school or a physical campus there is simply no shortcut in achieving what you want to in life. Academic achievement will demand a significant amount of time and effort on your end.
With that being said, not all college degrees require the same amount of time and effort from your side. Figuring out which degree and field of work suits you best depends greatly on your personal abilities and the university you decide to study at. Math is something that may come naturally to some people, but for some people math might as well be an alien language.
Similarly, some people might be great writers while others may struggle to form a coherent sentence. Each person is designed differently from birth and the major you select will depend greatly on these personal abilities. Some schools are far more rigorous and demanding than others. This too will influence the difficulty of a degree.
Separating the Hardest from the Easiest in General
With these conditions in place let’s try to separate the easiest majors from the hardest. Utilizing data that is already in place by National Center for Educational Statistics we were able to separate the three hardest and easiest degrees according to average GPA’s of students, completion time, difficulty in subject matter and many more factors. Without further ado, let’s see the list.
The Easiest
Education
While we don’t ascribe to the idea that those who can’t do, teach, our research confirms years of evidence that those students who arrive in college with the lowest average SAT scores and graduate with the highest grades tend to be education majors. Education courses emphasize skills like oral presentation and classroom management, which, although they may be difficult for certain personality types, fall into the category of hard to master but easy enough to learn.
Humanities
Sorry, humanities majors: not only do you have to deal with constant queries about what you plan to do with your dance, English, or classics degree, as a group you’re one of the easiest majors a student can sign up for. The average GPA for humanities students trumped even education for highest percentage of students in the 3.5+ bracket. The good news is despite calls to shutter humanities departments because of a perceived weakness in degree marketability in the job market; a growing body of commentators is calling for more students to enter the field.
Health
The difficult years of schooling doctors have to endure before donning the scrubs are well-documented. But for those who wish to work a little more indirectly in the healthcare industry, there is this somewhat easier bachelor’s degree. Holders of a B.S. in health administration study to work on the business side, dealing with human resources and hospital operations. A B.S. in health and wellness allows more direct contact with “patients” but in a much lower-risk, preventative care environment that is more general in scope than the one a heart surgeon works in, for example.
The Hardest
Engineering
Congratulations, engineers, now you finally have some proof for what you’ve been telling everyone all along: yours is the hardest major. From chemical to civil to electrical to mechanical, the courses you take in chemistry, physics, calculus, statistics, geology, biology, and other tough pre-reqs give you the lowest rate of As and the highest rate of Cs for any major. Because of this, the path has a notoriously high dropout rate some have pegged as high as 60% per year.
Life Sciences
It’s a rare student who doesn’t find at least one or two concepts that trip him up in cell biology class. The life sciences include anatomy, biochemistry, neuroscience, biology, genetics, zoology, and more tricky subjects, landing this field just behind engineering on the low GPA spectrum. Many graduates of a life sciences path go on to careers in the medical, dental, or veterinary fields, which famously require as many as seven or eight more years of difficult schooling, internship, and residency after a bachelor’s degree is earned.
Business & Management
You may think what your boss does is not difficult at all, and you may be right; a degree in management is probably not what makes this category a difficult one. It more likely lands here thanks to the challenges of getting a degree in finance or accounting. Either way, the data shows well below half of business and management students are able to pull off a 3.5 or better, and they average the second-longest amount of time in which students complete their degrees.
Do you work in the admissions office? We can help you connect with high school counselors to make sure they have the most up-to-date info to pass along to potential students. Contact us today.