Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 49

That's because every health and medical administration program with above-average earnings and an above-average percentage of Black graduates has a Black graduation rate below 50 percent. For social work and criminal justice, it is only
slightly better: Of the 417 criminal justice programs that graduated at least 50 students, only eight make the list. Only four
of the 250 social work programs do. Sociology is the sole major of the four that has more than 10 programs that meet the
above criteria (we have elected to list only the top 10), a relative abundance powered by the fact that the major is offered
and popular at elite four-year schools.
For these top-performing programs, earnings on the
whole are still significantly below what they are for high-paying fields. Columbia University's sociology program, the highest-earning one on this list, has a median earning well below
that of most engineering programs. None of the social work
programs listed have first-year salaries that exceed $34,500-
the median salary for recent college graduates nationwide.
Research shows that students who graduate with degrees in
more traditional liberal arts fields, like sociology, do eventually catch up to their STEM peers in incomes. But initial salaries
are important, especially for students dealing with debt, so it's
distressing that none of these very worthwhile majors yields
notably high immediate returns. It is further evidence that
there are structural problems with American politics, economics, and society that need to be addressed. We seriously
undervalue professions that prioritize helping others and the
people of color who are overrepresented in their workforce.
(The two are likely related: The high percentages of people of
color in these industries could well be part of why, on average,
they pay less.)
Even in a far fairer economy, of course, these kinds of
fields likely won't pay as much right out of college as the hard
sciences do, which typically demand more taxing, technical
knowledge. And to the extent that Black students are drawn
to lower-paying fields to help fight structural oppression-for
example, criminal justice majors are needed to help address
mass incarceration-then the ultimate solution to this imbalance is eliminating systematic discrimination. Doing so might
lead some Black students to choose other fields, while also reducing barriers to graduating from those fields.
But, needless to say, dismantling racism is a lengthy task.
Until it happens, it's especially critical that majors with high
Black enrollment be more lucrative.
The good news is that they can be. There are schools that
graduate these students into well-paying jobs. While none of
the listed social work programs had earnings that exceeded
$34,500, all of the sociology and criminal justice programs did.
And it's not just elite schools that made the cut. Almost half
of the institutions are open-access public schools. Every social
work program that appears is offered by a state school, and
the only two nonselective institutions on the sociology list are
public universities. One of them, the University of Houston,
has the highest share of Black graduates of any of the sociology programs, and its median earnings outpace several far

more famous colleges. It's a positive sign that even less-selective institutions can help students in these majors get decentpaying jobs right out of college.
We were able to produce this list only because the Department of Education, after years of promises, finally released earnings data by specific school programs. There's no
doubt that this is useful. But it also has limits. First, thus far,
the department only provides information for two years of
graduates-2015 and 2016. (To make sure we matched earnings with graduates, we measured the shares of Black graduates using the same years.) Second, it only gives us such
data for graduates who are one year out of college. It would
be much more helpful if the department provided programlevel earnings for classes that are multiple years, and ideally
decades, out of school.
The relative paucity of information presents other constraints. The Department of Education does not break down
earnings data by race. As a result, it is impossible for us to
know if Black students are sharing equally in the abovemedian earnings. Given that Black people make less than other Americans in the same fields and with the same levels of
education, it's likely that they are not. (Our belief is that the
relatively high share of Black graduates in these particular
programs means that they are likely still enjoying some of the
higher-than-average returns.)
In addition, the department does not provide programlevel debt estimates that include family debt, meaning that
researchers, including ourselves, cannot accurately measure
how much graduates of these programs owe lenders. Given
that people of color take on more debt on average than others, the government must determine and then release this information so we can better understand which programs are
most financially helpful for minority communities. Similarly, the proxy we used to determine Black graduation rates-
first-time, full-time students-is imperfect because it does
not capture returning or part-time students, of which Black
people also make up a disproportionate percentage. We used
it anyway, because the Department of Education provides no
part-time or returning student graduation data that is broken
down by race. It also doesn't provide graduation rates broken
down by each school's particular programs.
To fully explore which schools do the best job of helping Black students go into well-paying jobs, researchers need
as much granular program-level data as possible that includes
outcomes by race. In theory, getting it should be straightforward: Congress must simply repeal a 2008 law that bans the
government from being able to track by racial category students' outcomes after college. There's already a bipartisan collection of senators who support eliminating this prohibition.
In the meantime, the Department of Education can keep publishing data on program-level outcomes so we can see how
graduates fare several years after college.
But for now, we hope that our findings more fully illustrate the unfortunate state of majors, race, and earnings-
as well as provide some glimmers of hope.
Washington Monthly  49



Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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