 Is an actuarial science or actuarial mathematics degree or major worth it? That's what we're going to be talking about in this video, 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 college degrees, personal finance, careers and opportunities that are going to lead you to success. And we also go over avoiding some of the common financial traps that so many people fall for. If that sounds like something that interests you and you're new and you haven't done it already, go ahead and hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. So with that out of the way, let's jump right into it. This one is sometimes referred to as actuarial science, also referred to as actuarial mathematics. For the purposes of this video, these two are basically the same thing. And so I'm just going to go ahead and call it actuarial science. And actuarial science is basically the use of mathematics and statistics to assess risk. Now, generally this risk will be assessed in the finance industry. So one really good example would be insurance. When you take out an insurance policy, there is a lot of uncertainty and risk on the half of the company. And they need to basically figure out using calculations, how much they should be charging you every single month, so that both parties benefit from the arrangement. Now actuarial science is basically a very specialized type of mathematics where only about 1300 people graduate with this degree every year. Now, there are a number of different career paths that you can go down with this degree, you could become an actuary, of course, you could become an accountant, a financial analyst, a cost estimator, you could work in finance. Now, if you did go on to become an actuary, there's a series of very difficult exams you would have to take in order to become fully certified. So first, let's go ahead and talk about salary. With an actuarial science degree, you can expect to make around $64,000 a year in the first five years after graduating and 128,000 in mid-career pay, which is 10 years after graduating and on. Now, if you became an actuary according to BLS, you would expect to make around $108,000 a year, and that's just with a bachelor level degree. That's higher than the median for all math-related careers, and it's much, much higher than the median for all careers in general. Now, like I mentioned before, there are a series of very difficult tests that you have to take, and usually these tests have a passing rate of less than 50%. With each test that you passed, you're going to have more certification and therefore you'll likely end up earning more money. Overall, this is one of the best paying degrees out there. It is kind of a rare degree. You know, there's only 1,300 per year, but it pays extremely well. I'm going to go ahead and give this one a salary score of 9.5 out of 10. Next on the list, we're going to talk about satisfaction. Now, when it comes to satisfaction, I always like to talk about meaning as well as job satisfaction. So, meaning is basically how much you think your career benefits or helps the rest of the world, whereas job satisfaction is just how much do you enjoy doing your career. So, for instance, if you are playing video games for a living, you might enjoy playing video games quite a bit, but you might not think that it helps the world all that much. For different people, it's going to be completely different which one matters more to you, and this is a very subjective section, so take it with a grain of salt. But the meaning score here was about 42%, which is a little bit below average. Now, of course, if you're somebody who doesn't like doing math, you probably should not go into this degree. There's going to be a lot of math and a lot of number crunching, and specifically, you're going to be working quite a bit with statistics. Now, I'm somebody who kind of likes math a little bit, but statistics, I'm not such a big fan of. However, pay scale does say that actuaries have an 80% job satisfaction score, which means 80% of people are satisfied with their job. That's actually pretty good. Now, I will say that when it comes to job satisfaction, I think flexibility definitely plays a role as well. Flexibility is basically the fact that if you decide for whatever reason that you don't want to do your career anymore, would it be very easy for you to use those skills that you've learned to transition into a different career? Now, the skills that you learn as an actuary, math, and statistics are going to be very valuable in general. However, other math-related degrees, in my opinion, are going to have much more flexibility because of the fact that they kind of just teach you general math, whereas actuary teaches you a very specific type of math that you're going to use in a very specific career. So, if you do go on to become an actuary, that's probably going to be a very good thing. And if that's what you want to do with your life, then it's going to be great. But if you decide that you don't want to be an actuary, this can kind of pose a problem. I'm not saying that it's completely inflexible, but I would say out of the math-related degrees, it's one of the least flexible. Overall, I'm going to go ahead and give this one an eight for satisfaction. Now, according to BLS, math-related occupations are growing at about 27% over the next 10 years, which is much faster than average. To put that in perspective, the other occupations, just general occupations, are growing at about 4%. So, 27% is amazing. Now, on top of that, according to BLS, if you become an actuary, there's 27,000 jobs available. It's growing at 18%, which is much faster than average, meaning over the next 10 years, there's going to be about 4,900 jobs that pop up. Now, you definitely can go down other career paths with an actuary degree, like I mentioned before, but it's probably not as easy as if you just got a mathematics degree. So, this is one of those situations where there's multiple degrees where you could potentially become an actuary, whereas if you've got an actuarial science degree, there's pretty much only one normal career path that you would go down. Again, you could go into something else, but for the most part, what you're going to be learning is going to be tailored towards actuarial science. And for that reason, I think this one is a little bit too niche and a little bit too specific. If you absolutely 100% know that you want to become an actuary, then this is a great choice for you. However, if you're not 100% sure, you might want to consider just getting a math degree or a statistics degree instead. Overall, I'm going to give this one a 7.5 out of 10 for demand. Now, next on the list, we're going to be talking about X factors, and X factors are very subjective as well. Now, X factors involve anything from the risk of automation in the next 10 or 20 years to the hard skills and the soft skills that you're going to learn with this degree, to how well respected the degree is in general, or how the skills that you learn when getting this degree can translate to a bunch of different industries or careers. Now, in terms of automation, I think there's a relatively low chance that this one gets automated. According to willrobotstakemyjob.com, it has about a 21% chance of being automated, which is on the lower side. And about 34% of the people who took the poll thought it might be automated one day. I tend to think that even if the job itself that they're doing right now gets automated, the skills that you learn within the job are going to be able to be transferred to all kinds of different industries and careers. Still, it wouldn't hurt here to learn a little bit of computer programming, just to future proof yourself. Now, in terms of the skills, ZipRecruiter has a skills index where they rate the value of all kinds of different skills that you might learn in the workforce and at college. And two of the higher rated skills on this list are going to have to do with financial statements as well as statistics, which are two things that you'll definitely have to learn about if you become an actuary. And when it comes to assessing uncertainty and risk, a large part of the uncertainty is going to be the human element in any market. And humans, for the most part, are relatively unpredictable. And so even if they were able to come up with a computer program that could assess the risk for you, humans are going to change in the future. And so the computer program would have to change with it. And there would, of course, have to be somebody probably an actuarial science person right there next to the computer programmer telling them what they need to change. And when you look at skills in general, there's so many careers out there that are moving towards having people who are really good at math, not that many people like math. Let's just be honest. And the people that are good at math are going to be able to do jobs that a lot of the people that aren't good at math simply cannot do a lot of careers out there that traditionally didn't have very much math involved in them, like marketing, for instance, are now moving towards more of a data driven mathematics and statistical approach. And so people who can do the math side of things are going to have a huge advantage, even in careers that you might not think math is involved in. So overall, I'm going to give this one an 8.5 out of 10 for X factor. So some of the pros here are actuarial science degrees have very, very high pay. If you do want to go down this path, become an actuary, they are paid extremely well. And even if you end up not becoming an actuary, there's a lot of other math related careers that also pay really well. And that's because you learn a lot of valuable skills. And that's the next pro on the list, you're going to be learning a lot of valuable math related skills that just not that many people are either able to do, or they might be able to do it, but they just don't want to because they don't like math. And the third thing is that this is just a very practical degree. Some of the other math related degrees can be a little bit too theoretical. So although you learn a lot of, you know, really valuable math skills, it can be hard for you to see how you can translate those math skills to teaching you something that is going to be valuable to an employer in real life. This is why you might see people that graduate with math degrees have a little bit of trouble getting their first job right out of school. Now, once you get a couple years of experience under your belt, of course, you're going to be good to go. Now, some of the cons of this degree is that it's just a little bit too niche, a little bit too specific. And what I mean by this is if you got a mathematics degree and then just took extra classes in actuarial science, you could pretty easily become an actuary. And you could also get into a ton of other career paths as well. Whereas if you get an actuarial science degree, it's pretty much completely geared and completely tailored to becoming an actuary. Now, of course, you could end up going down a different career path, but it wouldn't be quite as smooth as if you just got a math degree. And if you're not 100% sure that you want to become an actuary, it's probably a better bet for you to just get a math degree and take extra classes in actuarial science. Now, the second con is if you do become an actuary, there's going to be tons of extremely difficult exams. So these are exams that you're going to have to be studying for on your own while you're working a 40-hour, you know, full-time job. These are some very smart people that are taking these exams and the passing rate is still below 50%. A lot of the time they'll study for an exam for months and months and they'll still end up not passing it. Now, if you're somebody who loves taking exams, you like that college environment where you're taking exams all the time, maybe this is going to be great for you, but for a lot of people, that might be a little bit off-putting. Now, another con is, you know, math. A lot of people don't like math. So if you don't like math, don't get into actuarial science. I don't care how much money you make, it's not worth doing something that you hate. All right, so my overall ranking for this degree is going to be 8.375 out of 10. That is very, very good. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button. Hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, share the video, and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, etc. that you have on the video. And before you leave, make sure to check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.