 So the reason you clicked on this video is because you wanted to know whether a communications major or a communications degree is going to be worth it. Is it going to be worth going $40,000 in debt and spending four years of your life grinding away in order to get this college degree? Well, you clicked on the right video because that's where we're going to be going over, but first we need to define what exactly is communications. And to be honest with you, it's a little bit difficult to define. So for instance, I got this definition from thebestschools.org, which is a pretty good resource. Communications degree focuses on effective communication through a variety of means, including print, web, social media, mass media, and the spoken word. So it's a little weird whenever you have a definition of a word that has the word itself and the definition. And you can see here that this applies to so many different things. It's said print, web, social media, mass media, and the spoken word. So there's so many different types of communication. It continues with a definition of a communications degree where it shows a communications degree has the potential to apply to almost any subject, discipline, or professional setting. And that makes a lot of sense. You are going to be using communication, no matter what career path you end up going down. Now I'm an introvert, a lot of people who watch this channel are introverts, but there's no escaping it. You're going to have to communicate with other people. But again, what exactly is a communications degree? Usually when I type in a degree name into Google, there's tons of different resources that will tell me exactly what it's all about. So here's another definition from prepscholar.com. So it says, communications major is the study of how to effectively communicate different types of information. So again here, it is using the word communication to describe what a communications major is. Here's another one from wayup.com. A communications major is a major designed to teach you about effective communication. Same thing. Here's another one from top universities.com. A communications degree is all about learning how to communicate communication skills. Wow. Using the word communicate three times in the same sentence, I am actually pretty impressed by that. So I think you guys get my point here. This is such a general skill that it's hard to even define what exactly you're learning here. This is almost like a life degree or something along those lines. It's so general that it's hard to actually define what it is. Like imagine if there was a life degree and you had to define what exactly a life degree is. You'd probably say something like, a life degree is all about living life and figuring out how you can live your best life. Now don't get me wrong. Communication as a skill is extremely important. I mean, look what I'm doing right now. I'm literally broadcasting and communicating to you guys using the medium of video on YouTube. No doubt communication as a skill is one of the most important things that you can possibly learn. And with the rise of technology in the last 100 years, there's so many different ways that you can communicate. And that is why this degree has gotten so popular. Overall, this is one of the most common degrees that people get. There's over 96,000 people here in the United States of America. They graduate every year with a bachelor's and a communications related degree. Now when I'm doing research on these videos, there's several different resources that I like using to figure out what types of career paths people end up going down when they get different degrees. Usually these resources are pretty accurate. And I make sure to cross reference them to make sure that, you know, people that are getting these degrees actually commonly go down these career tracks. With this degree, it was literally all over the place. There is no common career that people who graduate with communications degrees end up going down. Now that could either be a good thing because of how flexible the degree is, or it could be a bad thing because it's just so general that it's not teaching you specific skills that people are looking for. So it's sort of a double-edged sword. And that is going to be one of the general themes that I come back to during this video. So one really important thing, especially since this is a personal finance channel, is to talk about earning potential or salary. So with this degree, you can expect to make around $45,000 a year starting out and $79,000 in mid-career pay. You can compare that to a high and a low-paying degree and you'll see that it's on the lower side. Like I mentioned before, there's so many different career paths that you could potentially go down, but one would potentially be a broadcast and sound engineering technician. And they make $45,000 a year and that's around $21 per hour. So I'll go ahead and throw up some of the common career paths that people might end up going down and you'll see that it is all over the place. So you've got announcer, broadcast and sound engineering technician, editor, film and video editor, interpreter and translator, photographer, public relations specialist. I think you get the idea here and it would be tough to say a common career path that they go down just because there's so many different ones. But one thing you do notice here is many of them aren't very high paying. Now when it comes to how much money you would make over a lifetime with a communications degree, you'll see that it's around $2.3 million according to the latest US Census Bureau data. And you could compare that to all majors and all different types of occupations, which would be 2.4 million. Now again, that is over a lifetime. So that was in the last 40 years. So who knows what's going to happen in the next 40 years. It could be completely different, but generally speaking, it's not the best sign. So overall, when it comes to pay, this one isn't amazing. I'm going to give it a score of 5.5 out of 10. So next we're going to be talking about satisfaction. And when it comes to satisfaction, I always like to break it down into two different important areas. And the first one is going to be meaning or how much you think your career positively impacts the world. Now, PayScale has a meaning score that they give different degree types based on the surveys that they send out. And according to PayScale, communications degrees have a 45 percent meaning score and you can compare that to a radiation therapy degree and a plastics engineering technology degree, which is a good one and a bad one. And you'll see that it is on the lower side. So most people who are getting communications degrees end up going down career paths where they're not necessarily thinking that their job significantly positively impacts the world. But this section is extremely subjective. And depending on the person, you might not care all that much about meaning or you might think that you don't care that much. But at the same time, later on down the line, you're going to discover that it's more important. One of my favorite books, for instance, is Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. And without going into too much detail, he was basically somebody who was in a Holocaust camp during World War Two. And, you know, some horrible things happened to him. It was a situation that was just awful. So obviously his satisfaction during that time was quite low. But because of the fact that he had meaning, he knew that he was going to do something that was going to positively impact the world. And he did have meaning in his life. He was able to get through those hard times. So in many ways, I would argue that meaning is more important than job satisfaction. However, it really is going to depend on the person. But with that being said, one career path you might end up going down would be broadcast technician. And they have a meaning score of 47%, which, again, is on the lower side. If you look at their job satisfaction score, it's going to be 46%, which if you compare it to a really good one and a really bad one, you see that it's maybe average or slightly above average. But it's really difficult to say what your job satisfaction is going to be with a degree where there's so many different career paths you could end up going down. However, if you look at a survey that ZipRecruiter did where they basically asked people if they significantly regretted getting their college degree, and you can see that communications is the fifth most regretted type of degree. Around 27% of people said that they really regretted getting that degree, and the main reason was because it's too general. The one thing that I really want you to keep in mind here is this is probably the most subjective section. There's so many different things that are going to go into how much you enjoy your job or how much meaning you get out of it. It's the place you live. It's the people you work with, your boss, the company you work for, the industry. All of these things can significantly change what your job satisfaction is going to be like. Generally speaking, one analogy that I like to use is if you were able to play video games professionally, like you're just a streamer or something along those lines, you might have very high job satisfaction because you're getting to have fun professionally. However, you might not have very much meaning. You could potentially get bored playing video games all the time, and you're not necessarily helping a lot of other people out, although you could argue with me on that one. Maybe there's some streamers that help a lot of people. I don't know. And then an example of a career where you might have very low job satisfaction, at least a lot of people would think of it that way, would be a garbage man. So maybe they don't have very high job satisfaction. However, they might have a very good meaning score, meaning they are definitely positively impacting the rest of the world. Their job is extremely meaningful. It's awesome that I can just carry my garbage out to the dumpster and then just separate a few things here and there, and then they take care of everything else and they keep our streets clean. So depending on the person, job satisfaction might matter more, meaning might matter more, but overall, this one's very difficult to rate. I'm gonna give it a seven out of 10 when it comes to satisfaction. Next, we're gonna be going over demand. And this is basically for the skills that you learn with various degrees, how many people are out there, how many business owners and hiring managers are out there that need those skills and are willing to pay you for them. So going back to the broadcast and sound engineering technician, there's around 140,000 jobs available right now, and it's growing at 9%, which is much faster than average. So that's a pretty good sign. However, the problem here, same thing I mentioned before, there's so many different career paths. You can go down with this one because it's so general, so it doesn't really make sense to single out one career and talk about that. So it's pretty difficult to do a lot of research on this one, but one survey from big companies showed that only around 18% of them were actively looking to hire communications majors. You can compare that to 81% for engineering and 78% for business degrees. And a lot of the time in college, people will sort of joke about communications degrees being the athletes degree because it's one of the easier ones and you kind of just have to show up to class in a lot of the cases and you'll get by. And don't get me wrong, communication as a skill is very important, but usually you have to learn a specific type of communication. So for instance, YouTube videos are gonna be completely different than podcasts. And a lot of the time when it's an industry specific skill or just specific knowledge like that, you're gonna have to actually do it in order to learn. I love the saying, I forgot who said it, but it's basically any skill can be learned but not any skill can be taught. So there's tons of people graduating with this degree and there's honestly not all that much demand for people who have this very general skill because of the fact that it's so industry specific. So I'm gonna have to give this one a six out of 10. So next we're gonna be talking about X factors. And this is anything that I think is important that didn't make it into the other parts of the video. So remember when I mentioned that communications degrees over a lifetime, at least the latest census, so probably around the last 40 years or so, that would be an entire career, is gonna make around $2.3 million. That is a little bit below average. And if you look down the list at all the different career paths you could potentially go into, you'll see that it's pretty steady throughout. If you go into management, you can make quite a bit more, around 3.1 million. Talked about this a lot on other parts of my channel, but basically, if you have leadership skills, that's extremely valuable. However, a lot of different career paths are gonna be average or even below average in many cases. So it is relatively consistent but it's consistently average or below average. Now I like to use ZipRecruiter skill index and when you look up communications, unfortunately it's just too general to be listed as a skill on there. However, if you look up something a little more specific, like broadcasting, you'll see that it's 27 out of 100. You can compare this to a software engineering degree, which is really good and industrial sewing, which is bad and you'll see that it is on the lower side. Now the weird thing about this is if you got a communications degree and maybe you specialized in broadcasting in like the 1990s for instance, it could have been extremely valuable. However, what ends up happening with a lot of these degrees is they're extremely popular at a certain time and then time goes on, technologies continue to develop and then all of a sudden it's pretty much a worthless or useless skill for you to learn or at the very least it might be useful but getting a degree in it isn't gonna be all that great. However, because of the fact that so many people got a degree in it, departments are created, there's people who rise up through becoming professors and it continues on. Now I do think a lot of these soft skills that you learn getting these types of degrees can be extremely valuable. So for instance, being able to write something down, being able to digest a lot of information, being able to read a lot and understand it, being able to have critical thinking, create an argument and then deliver that argument, being able to just communicate with other people, give speeches, influence people, et cetera. These are extremely valuable skills, don't get me wrong. And not only will they likely help you financially but they'll help you in other areas of your life as well. But I think one of the big issues here is that all skills can be learned but not every skill can be taught. And there's a lot of skills out there that are like this, it's kind of like riding a bike. If you read a manual on how to ride a bike and read every book in the world on how to ride a bike, bought a course on how to ride it, hired a consultant to teach you how to ride a bike, all of that would be great but you're not going to learn until you actually get onto the bike and try to ride it. So with a skill like communication, for instance, I'll take making YouTube videos. I watch tons of videos on how to make YouTube videos, there's so much information out there, there's lots of channels and they're great and all but to be honest with you, I didn't start learning a lot about YouTube until I started making videos myself. That type of communication is not something that I would have been able to learn in a classroom without actively trying to do it myself. Additionally, when it comes to communication, the way that you communicate is going to be completely different depending on what career path or what skill you're trying to specialize in. So for instance, in podcasts, it's usually long form content where it's not very scripted. People are generally just having a conversation or just talking freely about whatever subject it is. Whereas with YouTube videos and videos in general, it's going to be relatively scripted. So people are going to know what they're gonna talk about before they start talking about it and they are going to have a outline for that. At least most YouTube channels I know work like that. There's some that are able to just talk off the top of their head, but that's pretty rare. Now when it comes to the likelihood of automation, you see a huge spectrum here. So for instance, going back to broadcasting, if you became a broadcast technician, there's around a 74% chance that your job is gonna be automated. If you became a sound engineering technician, there's around a 13% chance. So again, because of the fact that it's such a general degree, it's hard to say how easily automated these skills would be. The skill of communication, like giving speeches for instance, being able to talk to other people, understand what issues they're having and then give them feedback, all that sort of thing. Those things will never be able to be automated. Now this is a relatively easy degree and that's why it has that reputation for athletes always getting communications degrees because they're so busy playing basketball or football or something along those lines and they don't wanna have to deal with really difficult classes. However, this is one of those degrees where you can make the most out of it. So if you go into this major and you really apply everything that you're learning, I think you can get a lot out of it. I think that a lot of the soft skills, like I mentioned before, are gonna be extremely valuable for you in the rest of your life, even if they don't directly lead to you making more money in the form of job offers. So with that being said, when it comes to X factors, this one ranks relatively high. I'm gonna give it an eight out of 10. So when you add everything up and you divide it by four, the overall score is going to be 6.625 out of 10, which is okay, it is a little bit on the lower side. If you know exactly what you're getting yourself into, you know what career you're going for, you've reached out to people in that career and they tell you that it would be a good idea for you to get a communications degree in order to get into it, then it might be a good idea. But a lot of the people go for a communications degree just because they don't know what they should major in and I think that's pretty bad. When a business owner or a hiring manager sees that you have a communications degree, it's gonna be very difficult for them to tell that you're going to be able to provide skills that is going to pay your salary. So because of that, I would highly recommend that you consider either double majoring in this one, minoring in it, taking extra classes in it or just studying it on the side. If you are going to major in this one or double major in it, then I really recommend you focus a lot on internships, work experience, skills, as well as networking. Just getting this degree on its own probably will not be enough and you're gonna need a lot more than that in order to convince a hiring manager or a business owner to give you a job. I do think that the skill of communication generally might be one of the most important possible skills that you could learn in life, but it's just so general that it's difficult to see how it's gonna help somebody out. And because of the fact that so many people get these degrees every year, I do think this is one of the most overrated degrees because a lot of people think that they're gonna be able to get a job and then they find out the hard way that they can't. They end up going back to school, getting a master's or they get a job that's completely unrelated and in many cases you wouldn't have needed to get a degree at all. But that's just my two cents and if you want help figuring out what college degree you're trying to go for, you can check out my college degree ranker down in the description below in my Patreon. I've compiled what I think are all of the best resources across the internet and put them into one easy to use spreadsheet so you can kinda see everything right next to each other. I'm really proud of it and I think it'll help you out a lot if you check it out down in the description below if you don't wanna wait for me to come out with more videos. And if you haven't done it already, gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the video. Share the video, that always helps quite a bit and before you leave, check out my other videos right here, I made them just for you. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.