 Is a biology 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 fall for. But with that being said, let's jump right into it. We are going to be talking about whether getting a four-year bachelor's in biology, aka a biology major, is going to be worth it. So what exactly is a biology major or a biology degree? Well, a biology degree is gonna examine living organisms and their interaction with the environment. Now, there's a bunch of different variations of biology degrees, but around 79,000 people graduate with a bachelor's every year. There's a lot of different career paths so you can go down like biological technician, forensic scientist, can become a microbiologist, you can work in the lab, working on the bench, or you can work for the government. Next, we're gonna be talking about salary or earning potential of a biology degree. So with a biology degree, you would expect to make around $44,000 a year starting out and $80,000 in mid-career pay. Now, there's a bunch of different career paths, of course, that you could go down, but one of them would be a biological technician, and they make around $45,000 a year. Another one you could become is a forensic science technician, and they make around $59,000. And of course, you could become a microbiologist, and they make around $75,000 a year. Now, the great thing about all those careers that I just mentioned is they don't require you to get a graduate level degree, like a master's or a doctorate. You can get into them with just a bachelor's. And that can be a bit of an issue with some of the science-related degrees. You might have trouble finding a job with just a bachelor's, and so it's good to know that there are some careers out there that you can get with just a bachelor's in biology. Now, when you look at the biological sciences, which is what biology falls under, over a lifetime, they earn a little bit less than the average college degree. So the average college degree is gonna earn around $2.4 million over a lifetime, at least they did in the last census, and a biological science degree will earn around $2.3 million. So it's a little bit below average when it comes to your earnings. On top of that, a lot of the people who graduate with a degree in science will likely go on to get their master's or their doctorate, and so it would make more sense that they would earn more. However, in this video, we're mostly just comparing bachelor's to bachelor's. We're gonna keep this as an apples-to-apples comparison. And the truth is, this one isn't horrible, but at the same time, it's also not super impressive. So I'm gonna give it a 6.5 out of 10 when it comes to salary or earnings potential. Now, when it comes to satisfaction, I like to talk about meaning as well as just how much you enjoy your job. So when it comes to meaning, which is how much you think your job positively impacts the world, you see that biology has a score of around 65%. Compare this to a really high one, which is a medical degree, like radiation therapy at 91%, and a really low one, like plastics engineering technology at 31. And you can see that it's above average, and a lot of science degrees are above average when it comes to job satisfaction and meaning. When you look at job satisfaction on the same website, pay scale, you'll see that a career-like biological technician, for instance, has a job satisfaction rating of around 53%. Compare this to clergy, which has one of the highest at 90%, and parking lot attendance, which is 41%, one of the lowest. Now, when it comes to majors that people regret getting, a lot of people do end up regretting getting science degrees. It's actually the second most regretted major out there, and the main reason that 35% of people regret it is that you really can't get a job a lot of the time without getting an advanced degree, like a master's, a doctorate, or a professional degree. Now, keep in mind here that when it comes to job satisfaction and meaning, a lot of the time it's gonna have more to do with the company that you work for, or the industry that you work in, or sometimes even the role that you're in. For instance, if you're somebody who likes leadership and being a manager, if you have a manager position, you're probably gonna be more satisfied with it. But with that being said, usually when you see these science degrees, the satisfaction overall is pretty good, so I'm gonna give this one a 7.5 out of 10. Next, we're gonna be talking about demand, and that's basically just how much your degree is gonna be looked at by business owners and hiring managers who are potentially looking to hire people. Now, when it comes to demand, we're gonna be going over the careers that we talked about before, so biological technician, for instance, is growing at around 5%, which is slightly faster than average over the next 10 years. Forensic science technician is growing at 14%, which is much faster than average, and microbiologist is growing at 3%, which is around average. Now, when it comes to science-related degrees in general, they're not really all that well known for having a lot of demand, especially at the bachelor's level. A lot of the time, the skills that you learn are a little bit too narrow, and they're valuable, don't get me wrong, they're extremely valuable. The problem with them is a lot of the time, the skills that you learn with a science degree, especially at the bachelor's level, are just a little bit too narrow. So they're really valuable skills, don't get me wrong, doing things in a lab, for instance, is extremely valuable, but if you don't end up getting a job that's in a lab, you kind of just spent a bunch of time learning skills that you're not really gonna be able to learn or use anywhere else. However, a biology degree is gonna be more flexible than a lot of the other science degrees, and so one test that I always like to do is to look up the degree on monster.com or indeed.com. So for instance, when you type in biology degree as a keyword on monster.com, around 19,200 jobs pop up. Compare this to one where there's a lot of job postings like computer science with over 140,000, and then one where there's not much demand like anthropology with less than 1,000. Now when I was doing research on this one, reading a bunch of different forums and different places where people who actually have biology degrees kind of give their experience, I found that a lot of people were pretty disappointed. And I think the reason for that is because people think that all STEM degrees are gonna be fantastic, and biology is a science degree, right? But the truth is compared to the other STEM degrees, science is not nearly as good as technology, engineering, or mathematics when it comes to the numbers. So I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a 6.5 out of 10 when it comes to demand. Now when it comes to X factors, you can see that the US Census Bureau shows that all college degrees in all different professions makes around $2.4 million throughout an entire lifetime. If you get a biological science degree, which is what biology falls under, you're gonna make around 2.3 million, so that's probably a little bit below average. Zip Recruiter has a skills index list where they basically rank different skills and how valuable they are on the open market. So how much are companies willing to pay people that have specific skills? This isn't necessarily how valuable the skill itself is. For instance, I think art is extremely valuable, but a lot of companies are not gonna be willing to pay people for their art. And so you're gonna have to figure out how to make money with it in a different way. So you maybe start a business, something along those lines. But with that being said, biology did come in scoring around 60 out of 100, which is pretty good. Software engineering came in as the highest score at 88 out of 100 and an example of a really low one would be industrial sewing at eight. When it comes to your chances of this being either outsourced or automated, it's somewhere in the middle. It's not really bad, but it's also not that great. So for example, if you wanted to become a biological technician, there's around a 30% chance that it might be automated, you might be replaced by robots. And that was from a study of course, but a human poll of people who are actually in these types of careers and what people's opinions are on it showed about a 57% chance. So there's a lot of people who think this one might be automated. And one issue with science related degrees is like I mentioned before, a lot of them you're gonna have to go to school in order to get a job for. It can be very difficult to get a job with just a bachelor's level degree. And a lot of the specific skills that you learn are valuable. Don't get me wrong, but the problem is, is they're very narrow. So you know, you're learning stuff that you're gonna be doing in a lab for instance. If for whatever reason your plans change and you don't end up going down the science pathway, a lot of those skills that you're gonna learn are just too narrow for you to be able to use in other areas of your life. Now don't get me wrong, indirectly, that experience and those skills might help you out, but when someone sees that you have a science degree on your resume, it's probably not gonna be as impressive as something like an engineering degree, and it's not gonna be as flexible as something like a business degree. Science related degrees are going to be above average when it comes to difficulty as well. They're probably not as hard as something like engineering, but they're also not gonna be as easy as something like a business degree or a communications degree. But at the end of the day, a lot of these degrees kind of are what you make of them. So if you want them to be really difficult, if you wanna learn extra stuff, you can definitely do that. And if you wanna coast by and just study at the last moment, like most people do, you can do that as well. So some of the pros here are that it's pretty flexible for a science degree. Science degrees in general aren't all that flexible, but it is one of the more decent ones. You do have above average meaning and satisfaction scores. And once you get past maybe the first 10 years or so, the mid-career pay can be pretty good. The cons though are that the early career pay probably isn't gonna be all that good. Some of the higher paying jobs are gonna require additional studying. You know, you're probably gonna have to get a master's or a doctorate. And it can be very difficult for you to get your first job and get that initial experience. It's kind of the whole catch-22 situation where they want somebody who has two years of experience, but you have to get a job before you can get two years of experience. So overall, I'm gonna give this one a 6.75 out of 10. This can definitely work out for you if you know what you're getting yourself into and you have a good plan. However, I had a really close friend who was planning on going to medical school. She got her biology degree because she thought that that would be really good pre-med. She ended up not going to medical school and so she was sort of stuck with a biology bachelor's. She tried to find a good job, she wasn't able to find one and so she went back to school and she ended up getting her doctorate. Getting a doctorate can be extremely expensive and it's also a super long process. So you have to be really careful when you're thinking about going down that route. The big thing here is focusing on internships, work experience and learning skills, of course, and then also networking. It also might be a good idea to move somewhere that has a lot more opportunities for people with a biology major. You just wanna figure out what you're gonna be doing. So do you wanna be on the bench? Do you wanna be doing lab work? Maybe you wanna work for a pharmaceutical company. The earlier you figure out what you wanna do and then make a goal and then set a plan in order to reach that goal, but better. It might be a good idea considering double majoring or minoring in something else that might look a little bit better for a potential employer. It's also never a bad idea to learn programming skills or extra math or statistics skills as well. The big thing here is just making sure you talk to people, ask people what careers are out there. Talk to your university professors. Go to your university's career center. If you have a really good plan, this one can definitely work for you, but I do have to warn you that it is one of those degrees where a lot of people end up in a bad situation just because of the fact that they have trouble finding a job with just a bachelor's. And a lot of the jobs that are out there with just a bachelor's don't pay very well. They might pay like $14, $12 an hour, something along those lines. But overall, check out my college degree ranker in the description down below. It'll make your whole process of figuring out what you wanna do extremely easy. 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, et cetera, especially if you're someone who graduated with a biology major. Share the video with all your friends as well and whatever you do, don't leave. Check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.