 Is a recreation or leisure studies 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 mistakes that so many people end up falling for. If that sounds like something that interests you and you haven't done it already, which 80% of you haven't, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. So you might be asking yourself, what the heck is a recreation or leisure studies degree? This degree mostly focuses on the impact of recreational activities on communities. So things like event organization and making sure that communities have places to go to in order to meet up. So you can sort of think of the show Parks and Recreation, like I mentioned before. And with this degree, around 2,900 people graduate with it every year. Now you see people becoming recreational therapists, of course, but also fitness trainers and instructors. Many of them will go on to work in government jobs. And this could be local government, state government, or even federal government. So first, let's talk about the salary or the earning potential of this degree. So with this major, you would expect to make around $38,000 a year starting out and 59,000 in mid-career pay. Compare this to a very high paying degree like petroleum engineering or a very low paying degree like recreational therapy. And you'll see that it's slightly above the lowest one, but honestly not that much. It's still relatively low when it comes to salary. And one of the big issues when I was doing research for this video is I had a lot of trouble actually finding careers that people commonly go into that have to do with recreation or leisure studies. So for instance, you might become a recreational worker and they make around $26,000 a year, but you only have to have a high school diploma in order to get into that career. Becoming a recreational therapist might be another career path that you go down and PayScale has that one making around $30,000 a year. The truth is the most common career path that you would go down that actually has to do with this career would basically be a government worker. So think something along the lines of the show Parks and Rec, somebody who works for your local government and they take care of all the parks and the forests and stuff around the city. Now to be honest with you there's a lot of other different degrees that you can get into a career like that with. And on top of that there's not all that much demand out there for people who work in the government in that particular occupation. Now with this one, I think it classifies as a liberal arts degree and the average amount of money that people make over a lifetime for all different degrees is around 2.4 million. Liberal arts degrees on the other hand on average make around 2.1 million. And a lot of those people get masters or doctorates so it's kind of comparing apples to oranges because of course you're gonna make more money with a masters or a doctorate. So I don't know how to sugarcoat this one. I just have to be super honest with you guys. The pay for this one is not gonna be very good. I'm gonna give this one a score of 4.5 out of 10. Now we're gonna be talking about satisfaction and I always put this one in two sections. The first one is going to be meaning and the second one is going to be job satisfaction. Meaning is how much you think your career positively impacts the community and job satisfaction is how much do you enjoy doing your job. So for instance, if you got paid to watch YouTube videos and gently tap the like button on them all day long you'd probably enjoy that job quite a bit but it might not necessarily have a high meaning score unless you're watching my videos because it means a lot to me. Just kidding, but anyways, this one as you can imagine does have a relatively high meaning score at 63%, definitely above average. You can compare this to radiation therapy at 91% or plastics engineering technology at a relatively low 31%. And on top of that, let's say you became a recreational therapist, the job satisfaction score is also gonna be above average at 74%. Compare this to a really good one like clergy at 90% or a really bad one like parking lot attendant at 41%. So if you are able to get a job you will likely be relatively satisfied with it. Now this one probably falls under the category of social science degrees and they are the fourth most regretted type of degree with around 29% of people who get the degree regretting it. And the main reason is because it's too general impractical and hard to find a job without further studies. You see this a lot with the social science degrees where I'm not saying they don't have value. I think they teach you a lot of valuable skills. It's just hard to see how that value directly translates to people paying you money, hiring managers or business owners in order to do a job. So for instance, I love history. I think it has a ton of value. I think it's enriched my life tremendously. It's one of my favorite subjects, same with film. Film is really good for me. I'm a little bit of a film nerd even though I still don't know how to use a camera. I'm slowly learning how to use it. So it has a lot of value to me but it's just not the type of value that you might get paid for by a job. If I wanted to go full time with history or film then I'd have to start some kind of side hustle kind of like I'm doing right now with YouTube. Also keep in mind that job satisfaction is totally subjective. It might have a lot more to do with where you live, what people you work with, what company you work for, the industry that you're in, the career that you're in for instance. Do you like fast paced jobs? Do you like slower jobs? It could be totally different for everyone out there. It's extremely subjective but overall I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a score of seven out of 10 when it comes to satisfaction. Next we're gonna be talking about demand and when it comes to demand let's talk about recreation workers. For instance they're growing at around 10% which is much faster than average and that's with 417,000 jobs. So there's actually gonna be quite a few jobs that are created in the near future. 41,000 over the next 10 years. However like I said before that one only requires a high school diploma. Recreational therapist on the other hand is growing around 8% but that's only with 19,000 jobs meaning over the next 10 years there's only gonna be 1,700 jobs that pop up. And of course I'm always super honest with you guys on this channel because I want you to make a really good decision for yourself and be informed. So the skill set that you learn with a recreation studies degree although it might be very valuable. I'm not saying it's not valuable. When it comes to businesses out there on the open market, you know supply and demand there's not gonna be much demand for it. The few jobs out there that you are gonna be able to get are gonna be government jobs which can be tough to get in the first place and then to be honest with you guys there's not that many out there. And when you look this one up on monster.com you type in recreation and leisure studies degree only around 13 jobs pop up. That means only 13 job listings have that as a keyword. Compare that to a really good one like computer science that has 141,000 and one that's not so good like anthropology that has 829. So it's exceptionally bad. There's not that many people out there who are looking for people who graduated with this degree. Still overall having a degree, any degree is gonna open up a lot of opportunities for you. There's a lot of businesses out there that will only hire people who have a bachelor's and you know college degree. So I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a 4.5 out of 10. Next we're gonna be going over X factors. This is basically anything that doesn't fall into the other categories. So for instance, likelihood that something will be automated or outsourced, how flexible the career is that you might end up going into, how much your skills are gonna translate into other types of careers, how hard the degree is, what the dropout rate is, all kinds of things like that. Now this one probably falls under the category of a liberal arts degree and when you look at those degrees over a lifetime you're gonna earn around $2.1 million. This is compared to the average of $2.4 million for all different types of degrees. So it's definitely lower than average and that's despite the fact that many people end up going back to graduate school to get a master's or a doctorate which of course is going to pay you more. But it's also gonna take a lot more time and if you don't get it paid for it, it will be very, very expensive. Now when you look at the Zippercruiter Skills Index something like a community management skill for instance is only ranked around 18 out of 100. So software engineering would be 88 out of 100 and that's a really good skill and extremely high demand and then something like industrial sewing is only eight out of 100. So you can see that that sort of skill is not something that's very valued on the market right now. So it's not looking very good there unfortunately but there is one thing that's really good about a lot of these liberal arts and social science degrees and it's that they will probably never be automated. So you probably wouldn't want to talk to a robot therapist of course if you're gonna go talk to a therapist you'd probably talk to a human being. So that's why recreational therapists only has a 0.3% chance of being automated. It's also not very likely to be outsourced because you'd probably be talking to someone in person. Same thing goes with a recreational worker only a 0.6% chance of being automated which is very, very low. Now when it comes to flexibility how well this would translate into getting a job and a career that's totally unrelated. I'm not gonna sugarcoat this one guys there's probably gonna be quite a bit of bias when somebody sees that you graduated with a recreation and leisure studies degree. Regardless of whether the skills you learn are legitimate and they positively impact the community a lot of people are going to be very skeptical and whether they're right or wrong doesn't really matter for practical purposes. These would be people who might consider hiring you like owners or business managers. So overall I'm gonna have to give this one a score of four out of 10 when it comes to X factors. So the pros here are that it's gonna have a relatively high satisfaction rating overall. I mean after all you are learning how to have fun. It's not gonna be that difficult of a major it's not gonna be one where you're like an engineer and you're studying like 20 hours a day and you get to actively assist in the well-being of different communities. The cons here are that there's gonna be a low salary and income and that's if you're even able to find a job because there's not gonna be that many jobs out there. It's gonna be really hard for you to find work especially if you're looking to work in that field specifically without going to more school and you know getting a master's or a doctorate. So overall I'm gonna give this one a score of 5.125 out of 10. You know I always say that you can make any degree work if you have a really good plan going into it. It's gonna be pretty tough for you to make this one work but you know the same thing applies if you know what you're getting yourself into if you have a really good plan you can definitely make this one work for you. If this is your passion, if having fun is your passion and you wanna work for the government you know exactly what job you're going for. You wanna be like one of those people on the show Parks and Recreation then hey by all means you can definitely go for this one. However you really wanna make sure that you network, you build skills, you do some internships, get some job opportunities and make sure that you talk to people who've gotten the degree and ask them what career pass they went down what they actually recommend that you do while you're going to school. I'm not saying that this one doesn't have any value but when it comes to employment value it's not gonna be that high. There's a lot of things out there that I think have tremendous value. Lots of the different liberal arts and arts majors for instance I think they're extremely valuable but unfortunately when it comes to the laws of supply and demand there's just not gonna be that many businesses that are hiring. However like I said before having a college degree versus not having a college degree is gonna open up a lot of career opportunities for you. Sometimes it's just a box that you have to check if you wanna work for a certain company you know they'll give you an interview if you have a college degree and if you don't have one you're just not gonna get an interview at all. If you wanna make your search for the perfect degree a lot easier check out my college degree ranker in the description down below and if you haven't done it already hit that subscribe button ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms especially if you got this degree I'd love to know what your opinion on it is. Share it with your friends and definitely do not leave check out my other videos right here I made them just for you.