A college major doesn’t have to be hard to set you on a rewarding career path, but some easy majors are more rewarding than others. As a general rule, choose the major you enjoy the most, and it will be the easiest and most rewarding for you. However, in some situations, you must consider your circumstances before choosing the major you enjoy most. For example, in some parts of the country, liberal arts majors have difficulty finding work and paying student loan debts. These degrees can still be appealing to employers if you know how to sell yourself during an interview.
One option to consider is an associate’s degree in a subject that may not be particularly easy but takes only two years to complete. Many jobs that require only a two-year degree pay very well and are predicted to have excellent growth over the next ten years. Web designers, dental assistants, and computer-assisted design artists earn high incomes and work in professional environments with excellent job prospects. Your choice of major depends on your natural abilities and interests.
Easy College Majors for Creative People
Most people consider liberal arts or fine arts majors to be easier than science or business majors, regardless of a student’s interests. Of course, making a distinguished career in the liberal or fine arts isn’t at all easy, especially due to the competition for jobs in research and education. You have to be truly passionate about your major to become a professor in any liberal or fine arts subject, but you can find other types of work more easily.
With an English or communications degree, you can work as a writer, and with a psychology degree, you can work in business or marketing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, liberal arts majors work in a wide range of industries, many of them unrelated to their majors. On the other hand, fine arts majors are really limited to working in artistic professions, but these skills can be very practical and lucrative if you have natural artistic ability and a strong drive to work in a creative field.
Degree Short Cuts: The Associate of Arts or Science
When many people think about college majors, they’re often thinking of four-year degrees. True enough, there are some four-year degrees that are easier than others. However, it is worth exploring degrees of shorter durations, namely, two-year degrees.
Often called associate’s degrees, these degrees cover the first two years of a college major. For example, a person who’d like to study communication or videography could pursue an associate’s degree in the subject. The degree-earner would complete all of the coursework for the first two years of this degree. He or she would also complete most if not all of the major’s general requirements. These classes would take care of the major’s basic math, English, or history requirements.
Most university programs have such requirements, even in a bachelor’s program. The advantage of taking these classes in an associate’s program is that they’re often less expensive because these classes are held at the local community college.
Additionally, part of what makes a major difficult is the amount of time that’s required to finish it. A four-year degree often takes longer than four years. Over the course of time, fatigue sets in. Even truly easy college majors may become difficult over a long period of time.
A four-year degree is a lot to juggle, particularly when a student has to work through college. The two-year degree is long enough to provide a foundation in the subject but short enough to prevent fatigue from setting in.
Best-Paying Easy College Majors
The easiest majors that pay off the most are all in high-demand fields, such as healthcare, computer programming, and engineering. These majors aren’t as easy as liberal arts majors, but their short duration makes them extremely valuable for the amount of investment required. If you have some technical ability, an associate’s degree in computer programming or Web design is much easier than a four-year computer science degree. Web developers earned a median annual salary of $62,500 in 2012.
Associate’s degrees in nursing or dental hygiene typically have heavy schedules and take some discipline, but they’re easier than four-year nursing degrees. The healthcare industry is one of the most short-staffed and high-demand industries, and in 2012, registered nurses earned a median annual salary of $65,470.
Resource: Top Online Colleges for Nursing
Final Thoughts on Easy College Majors
Engineering technicians work with engineers to help plan projects in aerospace, building construction, electronics, and all other fields of engineering. You only need an associate’s degree to become a technician, and you can expect to make around $47,000 to $57,000, depending on your field.
Choosing the easiest college major isn’t necessarily a bad idea, especially if it’s the subject that interests you the most. If you’re trying to decide on a career path, keep an open mind to the two- and four-year degrees that best utilize your skills.
Additionally, it’s important to remember that aptitude plays a role in how easy or difficult a major is. For one person, majoring in a foreign language is easy. For another person, majoring in physics is easy. The most successful students choose majors that they enjoy because they know that their passion for the subject and their aptitude makes the subject easy.
Students may also find that the length of time it took to get their degree makes a difference. Even if a student has an aptitude for a subject, he or she may begin to feel fatigued during the course of a four-year degree. In this case, it’s often better to earn a two-year degree instead of a four-year degree, even if the student loves the subject.
Conclusion
Finally, the majors that seem the easiest on the outside looking in, like liberal arts majors, may actually be difficult for reasons that most people do not consider. Sometimes, it’s more difficult to get a job in these fields. So, while a major like computer science may require a lot of math and plenty of rigorous training, it winds up being an easier major in the end. Students who undertake these kinds of majors get jobs easily, which makes the years it took to get the major seem much easier in hindsight.
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