Major Trade-Offs: The Suprising Truths About College Majors and Entry-Level Jobs

Fri, October 2, 2026 12:30 PM at 457 Berkey Hall

Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths About College Majors and Entry-Level Jobs

A college degree no longer guarantees a pathway to the middle class, prompting students, families, and policymakers to increasingly favor “practical” majors such as Engineering and Business over the liberal arts. Drawing on longitudinal interviews with 91 college seniors and recent graduates, Major Trade-Offs examines how graduates navigate the transition from college to work and reveals the unexpected ways early careers vary by major. Moss-Pech argues that the central trade-off facing students is not between practical and passion majors, but between majors that lead to well-paying jobs with limited opportunities for meaningful work and those that offer more substantive work but lower pay. Moss-Pech offers a new framework for understanding the college-to-work transition and calls for a reassessment of the value of the liberal arts in the contemporary economy.

Corey Moss-Pech is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida State University. His research examines how individuals navigate educational organizations and labor market institutions to better understand stratification and social mobility outcomes. He is the author of Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths about College Majors and Entry-level Jobs, published in 2025 with the University of Chicago Press.