 Is an English major or English degree worth it? That's what we're going to be talking about today. Is it going to be worth it to go $40,000 in student loan debt and spend four years of your life getting this degree? Now, English is going to be the study and analysis of English literature, writing, composition, and speaking. However, for the most part, it is going to focus on the written word. In the United States, this is also one of the most common bachelor degrees that you're going to see. So over 30,000 people graduate with this one every year. Now, a few examples of careers that you could go into would be an author, technical writer, reporter, or a teacher. Now, in this video, I'm going to go over four of the most important points that you should definitely be thinking about if you're considering going for this as a major. These are going to be salary, satisfaction, demand, and X factors. Now, when it comes to earning potential or salary, with this degree, you can expect to make around $42,000 a year starting out and $74,000 in mid-career pay. You can compare this to one of the highest paying degrees and a low paying one and you'll see that it is on the lower side. Now, looking a little more deeply into it, some of the career paths you might go down, for instance, would be a writer or an author and they make around $63,000 a year, which is $30 an hour. You could also become a technical writer and they make around $72,000 a year, which is $35 an hour. A reporter, correspondent, or broadcast news analyst is going to make $46,000 a year or $22 an hour. And finally, a teacher would make around $59,000 a year. Now, literature-related degrees over a lifetime will make around $2.1 million dollars compared to 2.4 average for all majors and all different types of careers. So, as you can see, all the different career paths are either below average or maybe slightly above average. And over a lifetime, it's below average. So, this is not going to be one of the higher paying degrees most of the time. I'm going to give this one a 5.5 out of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about satisfaction. And this is very important. It's probably more important than pay. And I like to break this down into two different areas. First of all, we're going to talk about meaning, which is basically how much you think your career positively impacts the world. And people who graduate with an English language degree have around a 47% meaning score, which, if you compare it to a really good one and a bad one, you'll see that it's a little bit below average. So, that kind of makes sense. You're not necessarily going to be directly helping other people. I mean, you might write something that helps a lot of people, but it's kind of difficult to see the fruits of your labor, so to speak. However, it does depend on what career path you end up going down. So, for instance, if you became an English language teacher, that has about a 96% meaning score, because teachers know that they're doing something that's extremely important. You're going to be helping to shape young people at a very important time of their lives. And so, you know that you're making a huge impact, especially if you're doing a good job. And on top of that, with this one, it does have a higher than average job satisfaction score of around 74%. So, you can compare that to a really good one and a really bad one again, and you'll see that both of them are above average. I know this is kind of an obvious statement, but I think people who love reading and writing really tend to love reading and writing. That's just one thing that I've noticed in my life, and you know, I personally keep it as a hobby, but it's something that I enjoy doing as well. Now, with that being said, I do have some bad news here. When it comes to the most regretted types of degrees, language degrees are number one. That's right. 42% of people, according to Zippercruder, regret getting a language-related degree. And the main reason is because it's impractical and there's limited job opportunities. However, I will say that English, realistically speaking, is probably the most profitable language that you can learn, and that's why so many people from other countries that aren't primarily English speakers end up learning English. So, out of the language degrees, English would probably be one of the better ones for you to major in when it comes to profitability and just practicality in general. However, I will mention here a lot of the time when it comes to meaning, job satisfaction, it might have a lot more to do with the people you work with, your boss, the company you work for, the industry you work in, your personal preferences, all kinds of other things can affect how happy you are when it comes to job satisfaction and meaning. So, this is a very subjective section. Take it with a grain of salt, but overall, I'm going to give this one an 8 out of 10 when it comes to satisfaction. Next, we're going to be talking about demand, and this is extremely important. So, when it comes to demand, you're going to look at something like an author, and there's 131,000 jobs available out there. However, it's declining at negative 2% over the next decade. It's a little bit better for technical writers. There's 58,000 jobs, and it's growing at 7%, which is faster than average. Another career path you might go into is working as a reporter, correspondent, or broadcast news analyst, and there's 52,000 jobs available, but it's declining at negative 11%. You might also become a teacher, and one type of teacher would be kindergarten or elementary school, and there is 1.5 million jobs available, and it's growing about as fast as average at 4%. Now, statistics are a little weird for unemployment rates, obviously, with everything that's going on in the world right now, but before all this happened, English degrees did have one of the worst unemployment rates overall. However, when you look up English degree on monster.com, you'll see that around 48,000 jobs pop up, and you can compare that to a really good one and a bad one, and you'll see that it is on the higher side. So what that tells me is people aren't necessarily actively looking for people who have English degrees in order to do jobs that are related to English. However, they are looking for people who have English degrees to do other types of jobs. And again, they may not be actively looking for them, but they at least list the degree in the job description so that it pops up. So overall, not great here. A lot of people are going to end up unemployed or they're going to end up doing something completely unrelated to becoming a writer or something along those lines. However, I am going to give this one a six out of 10 when it comes to demand. Next, we're going to be talking about X factors, which is anything that's important that didn't make it into any of the other parts of the video. So looking at how much you earn over a lifetime, like I mentioned before, 2.1 million versus 2.4 million. So a little bit before average. However, another thing I like to look at is the specific career path they end up going down. So for instance, if you get a literature related degree and then you go into management, you'll make a little bit above average at around 2.8 million over a lifetime. So that does show that there are some relatively high paying options out there for you, even if most of the other jobs aren't going to be paying all that well. However, that being said, if you go into transportation, it shows you're only going to make around 1.4 million. So that shows that this is not one of those degrees where you can get it and make a lot of money no matter what career path you end up going down. Now, when I looked up English as a skill on Zippercruiter, it wasn't even on there. However, one career path you might go down is becoming a preschool teacher. And that is a 29 out of 100 in terms of skill. And you can compare that to software engineer and industrial sewing. And you'll see that it's definitely on the lower side. So that's generally not a good sign. And it doesn't mean that this isn't valuable, you know, value is something that's pretty subjective. It just means that business owners and hiring managers are not necessarily at this particular time in history, actively looking for people who have skills and the written word of English. Now, when it comes to how easily outsourced something is going to be, it really depends on what career path you go down. So for instance, if you want to become a teacher, very low chance of outsourcing about 08%. But if you want to become a technical writer, there's about an 89% chance that it's going to be automated. And I think a lot of the world is learning English as well. And they're learning it at a really high level. I mean, a lot of them study it formally. And so some people will actually know English better than people here in the United States know it because, you know, we all speak American here. So in many cases, these English related tasks can be outsourced. I personally have friends who have blogs, for instance, online, and they have people from other countries write posts on there. However, writing at an extremely high level, for instance, copywriting, that is a skill that would be pretty tough to outsource to another country. Just because you have to understand the nuances of marketing here in the United States. And it's pretty difficult to outsource something like that to another country, because they probably wouldn't understand references and ways of talking and just the vernacular and everything along those lines. So overall, when it comes to X factors, I'm going to give this one a seven out of 10. So when you add all four of those up, and you divide it by four, you get an overall score of 6.65 out of 10, which is okay. I think a lot of people who go into English are probably going to regret it just because of the fact that there's not that practical and just aren't that many jobs out there specifically for people who majored in English. However, it's one of those skills where there's a lot of soft skills attached to it. You learn how to make an argument, how to present that argument, how to do research, how to devour information really quickly, and then present that information to somebody else. You learn really important communication skills. So although it might not directly help you make money in terms of getting you a job, it will likely indirectly help you in many areas of your life, including financially. With that being said, if you want to become a famous writer like JK Rowling or R.R. Martin, chances are getting an English degree or a creative writing degree or anything like that will likely not help you very much. You would probably be a lot better off if you just got a completely unrelated degree or just got a normal job and then learn to write on the side by just doing it over and over and over again. This is one of those skills like becoming a famous writer, for instance, or becoming an entrepreneur, where the only way you're going to learn how to do it is to just practice. It's kind of like riding a bike. You can't read a manual on how to ride a bike or watch a video or hire somebody to tutor you on how to ride a bike. The best way to learn how to ride a bike is just to get on and try to ride it. So with that being said, I highly recommend either double majoring in this, minoring in it, maybe just taking extra classes on the side or studying it on the side or just going off and trying to do something on your own. If you want to be successful as a writer, chances are you're going to have to get extremely entrepreneurial, start your own business, become a freelancer, something along those lines. Because the truth is there just aren't going to be that many jobs out there that you can apply for and get it. And even if you do get it, it's probably not going to be that great because there's a thousand other people that would like that same position. You guys know me. I try to be as honest with you as possible and give you my best assessment. But again, this is just my opinion. This is extremely subjective. If your dream is to become a writer and you think this will help you and you've done your research and you've really planned it out, then don't let me stop you. For one person, this could be a 10 out of 10 degree. And for another person, it could be a one out of 10. With that being said, if you want help researching what degree you should go for, check out my college degree ranker down in the description below. That will make everything so much easier for you. It is in my Patreon and I plan on updating it in the near future. Once things go back to normal in the world and making it even better. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, etc. that you have on the video. Sharing always helps and it's much appreciated. And don't leave. Check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.