 is a food science degree worth it. That's what we're gonna be talking about today, but before we get into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel, we talk about personal finance, college degrees, careers, and opportunities that are gonna lead you to success, and we also go over how you can avoid some of the common financial traps that so many people end up falling for. Now, if that sounds like something that interests you, then go ahead and hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. Now, with that out of the way, let's jump right into it. To start this off, you wanna know what the heck is food science? That's why we're here. Now, for the most part, food science is studying and researching the basic elements of food using chemistry and biology. And it's all about improving the supply of food that's offered to the general public. And this is not only the quality of the food, but it's also how good it tastes and how easily it can be mass manufactured and then stored. So if you're a foodie, you're somebody who absolutely loves food and you're passionate about it, this could be great for you. And shout out to my foodies, 2020 has been a very tough year for them. They probably are not able to go to their favorite restaurant right now. I miss eating. Now, the first thing that we're gonna talk about when it comes to this degree, because this is a personal finance channel, we're gonna be talking about salary, of course. Now, at this degree, you're gonna start off making around $49,000 a year in your first five years and then $91,600 in mid-career pay, which is basically 10 years and after. And that's gonna be relatively decent, but just not amazing. Now, in general, biological science degrees are gonna be a little bit below average when you look at someone's lifetime earnings. So the average for all occupations in all majors is gonna be around $2.4 million earned over a lifetime. And then biological science majors, which is what food science falls under, is gonna be around $2.3 million. So it's a little bit below average. Now, there are a decent amount of career paths that you could potentially go down here. I'll just name off a few of them. Agricultural and food science technician, biochemist, biological technician, chemical technician, conservation scientist, environmental scientist, farmer, rancher, and microbiologist. Now, as an agricultural and food scientist, you're gonna make around $65,000 a year. This is the most obvious career path that you might go down, but there's a lot of other options as well. You might become a forester or a conservation scientist, and they make around $62,000 a year. Environmental scientists make around $71,000. That's another option for you. And microbiologists make around $75,000, although that might be a little bit more rare of a career path for you to go down. Overall, when it comes to earnings and salary, I always recommend that people try to make at least $75,000 a year, because studies have shown that your happiness increases up to about $75,000, and that study was done about 10 years ago, so it's probably more like $80,000 by now. But once you get past that number, whatever it is, which is gonna change depending on where you live and all kinds of other different factors, your happiness doesn't really increase. So I think that's a really good target for you to aim for. Somewhere around $75,000 to $80,000 a year is where your happiness is gonna max out. And overall, with this one, I'm gonna give it a score of seven out of 10. It's not amazing, but it's also not horrible. Now next on the list, we're gonna be talking about satisfaction, and I always like to split this one up into two different categories, which are gonna be more important to different people, depending on what type of person you are. One of them is going to be meaning, and the other one is gonna be job satisfaction. So meaning is basically how much you think your job positively contributes to the world. So maybe you hate your job, it's super stressful, but at the end of the day, you know you're really helping other people out, and so it might have a high meaning score. Whereas satisfaction is just how much do you enjoy doing your job. It's not necessarily something that is contributing to the world, but maybe you really enjoy it. So when it comes to meaning, this one actually surprisingly scores relatively low. The meaning score is 43%, and just to give you an idea where that lays, radiation therapy has the highest meaning score at about 90%, and plastics engineering technology has a very low score at around 30%. Now when it comes to job satisfaction, it does seem to score a little bit better. So as a food scientist, you have around a 72% job satisfaction score, and just to give you some context, clergy has the highest score at around 90%, and parking lot attendance has the lowest score at around 41%. So 72% is on the higher side, and that's relatively good. One thing I've noticed with science-related degrees is the people who are actually able to get a job do tend to be relatively happy, because those people are probably the type of people who really enjoy doing science. Now when it comes to science-related degrees, I get a lot of flak for saying this, but you guys know me, I'm a straight shooter, I'm just gonna tell you the way that it actually is. They aren't very good when you compare them to the other STEM degrees. So people think that all STEM degrees are amazing, but the truth is science degrees, which is the S in STEM, I don't know if that's, I think you guys see it this way, it's the S in STEM. Science degrees are not as good as the TEM. They're actually the second most regretted type of degree at around 35%. And the reason for that is because it's very difficult to find a job with just a bachelor level degree. A lot of people have to go back and get a master's or a doctorate, which takes lots of extra time, and it's very expensive. And I don't think they're as bad as a lot of other degrees, there's degrees that people regret less, but I think the reason for that is because they kind of knew what they were getting themselves into, whereas a lot of people think that science degrees are good, and they don't really understand that they're not as good as people think they are. You can compare that to a math degree or a computer science degree, where only around 12% of people regret it. Now with that being said, a lot of the time it's gonna have more to do with either the business that you work for or the industry that you work in when it comes to job satisfaction and just satisfaction in general. So for instance, you might be doing a job that you're not crazy about, you know, it's okay, but you're working in a business that's really awesome, they treat you well, they give you all the hours that you want, they give you good vacation time, good benefits, et cetera. Whereas if you're working in an industry that's really struggling or maybe your company's struggling, you might not have a very good time. They're probably gonna work you really hard, they're not gonna pay you as well, and there's not gonna be as many opportunities. Satisfaction is always extremely subjective, so for one person, this might be a 10 out of 10, and for another person, it might be a one out of 10, and I always recommend looking at the concept of AikaGuy, and that's basically the Japanese concept that means a reason for being, and it's really helped me kind of discover what I want to do with my life, even at an early age it did, and then it's even helped me later on in life. So I always recommend looking at that, and it kind of breaks it down in a way that makes a lot of sense. But overall, when it comes to job satisfaction, I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a score of seven out of 10. Next on the list, we're gonna be talking about demand, and this is probably the most important one out of all of them. Now, when it comes to demand, a food scientist is gonna be growing around 6% over the next 10 years. For a conservation scientist, it's around 5%. For environmental scientists, it's around 8%, which is much faster than average. And for a microbiologist, it's 3%, which is about average. Now, when it comes to being a food scientist, for instance, you might wanna make sure that you look at the region that you want to live in. For some reason, food scientists that live in Illinois make around $95,000 a year, whereas ones that live in Texas only make around $68,000, so there's a huge discrepancy there. Now, one test that I always like to do is to type in the name of the degree into either monster.com or indeed.com, one of those job-searching websites. So for instance, when you type in computer science degree, you have 141,000 jobs that pop up that have that as a keyword. And when you type in anthropology degree, you only have around 829. When you type in food science degree, 1,730 jobs pop up, so it's a little bit better than the bottom feeder, which would be like anthropology, but it's nothing amazing. So all things being considered when it comes to demand, I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a 6 out of 10. Now next, we're gonna be talking about X factors, and that's anything that didn't make it into one of the previous three categories. So we're gonna be talking about things like automation, outsourcing, the skills that you learn, how flexible the degree is, et cetera. Now I mentioned before, but in general, science-related degrees, and especially biological science-related degrees, don't make as much as something like engineering, for instance. An average engineer is gonna make $3.5 million over a lifetime, and the average person who graduates with any college degree is gonna make on average about $2.4 million. Whereas someone who graduates with a biological science degree only is gonna make around $2.3 million, so it's a little bit below average. However, weirdly enough, if they go into a career where they're working with computers or mathematics, like a technology-related career, like computer programmer or software developer, they're making on average around $3 million over a lifetime. This makes a lot of sense to me because a lot of them are getting the degree, they can't find a job, and so they probably learn how to code on the side or something like that. And there are a lot of soft skills, as well as a few hard skills that you can learn getting a science-related degree that can indirectly be valuable to companies on the job market. However, when it comes to the specific skills, something like food science, for instance, the value on the job market in terms of what businesses are willing to pay you for those certain types of skills is not that great. So, for instance, software engineering is the most highly valued skill at around $88 out of $100, and then industrial suing is the lowest valued skill at around $8 out of $100, and food science comes in kind of in the middle, around $39. That doesn't mean that it isn't valuable. I mean, pretty much anything can be valuable. Art, for instance, in my opinion, is extremely valuable, but when it comes to how much companies are willing to pay people who have those particular types of skills, it's not as valuable in that respect. And learning a skill set that's extremely narrow, like food science, for instance, it's probably not going to be as easy for you to use those skills and just transition into a different type of career. Compare this to a business degree graduate who can go into just about any career path in any company in any industry in the world, or someone like an engineer or someone who graduates with a physics degree who is just so highly respected that just about any company out there is going to hire them just because of the fact that they know they're really smart, really hardworking, and probably a good problem solver as well. Food science does have a little bit of that going for them. I mean, science-related degrees are relatively well respected, but it's definitely not on the level of engineering or physics. Now, with that being said, one big time positive here is that food science-related skills are probably not going to be automated in the future. Will robots take my job? Has the chances of automation at around 8%? And that makes a lot of sense. Let's say you go into a food scientist position and you are somebody who is tasked with creating a new type of soda for Coca-Cola. Is a robot going to be able to taste the soda and understand that it tastes really good and consumers would likely, you know, buy a bunch of that type of soda? Probably not, and that might not ever be able to happen. But overall, when it comes to X factors, I'm going to give this one a score of 6 out of 10. So the pros with this one is that it's going to have a relatively good satisfaction rate. It's not too bad when it comes to meaning and satisfaction. The automation risk is also going to be relatively low. It's probably not going to be automated. And you actually did see some relatively decent growth for some of the careers that you might go into. And on top of that, you might not have to get a master's or a doctor. You might be able to actually get a job with just a bachelor's. Some cons here, though, is that it's not very flexible. So the skills that you're going to be learning here are not going to be super flexible to where you could probably go into any other career very easily. The pay is okay, but it's not great. And the career paths in general are going to be a little bit too narrow, in my opinion. This is a very common issue for science related degrees. So overall, I'm going to give this one a score of 6.5 out of 10. If you know exactly what you want to do, you've really done your research. You're passionate about this degree. Don't let this video dissuade you from going into it. I just highly urge you to make sure that you have a really good plan. You know exactly what career paths you're interested in going down. And then I really think it's a good idea to contact people who are in those career paths and ask them what they think about getting this degree. You know, you could go down the academia route. You could go down the industry route. You could work in food quality safety. You could do product development. Of course, you could work in production as well. You really just want to make sure that you have a good idea of what you're doing going in. Going into something without a plan, especially when it comes to a degree that's not just a slam dunk type of degree, where if you get it, you're going to be good to go, which degrees unfortunately are not like that anymore. They used to be maybe 20, 30 years ago, but when it comes to going $40,000 in debt on average, you really need to make sure that you're treating it like an investment. Speaking of investment, I made the best in my opinion, the best college degree ranker in the entire world. I basically took all of the most important statistics from all over the internet and all the best sources, which I've done hundreds of hours of research to make sure that I know what the best sources are, and I put them into a convenient table where I rank different types of degrees. Right now, it's only on version 1.1, so it's not a finished product, but I think this will really help you when it comes to making your decision. And for the people who are too impatient for me to get to their degree, I get these comments all the time. You can go ahead down to my Patreon. You can pay for the Patreon, access it early. On top of that, I'm going to be posting a lot of exclusive content on there, stuff that really doesn't make sense for me to put on the YouTube channel just because the type of content you put on YouTube is different than the type of content you put on Instagram or TikTok or Patreon. So for instance, I'm going to be posting a stock portfolio on there that goes over all of my different stock investments, so you should definitely check that out. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, just demolish the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below, any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the video. And before you leave, don't leave guys, check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.