8 College Degrees with the Worst Return on Investment - Salary.com

I've always wondered about the supply & demand balance between demand for college graduates and the various degrees offered by colleges and universities.  When I went to college in the 1960s we were told that the country needed more engineers and scientists.  However it appeared that all of the colleges made it more difficult to get into those degree programs, by requiring higher test scores and GPAs.  They also seemed to make it more difficult to "stay in" those programs, by requiring heavier course loads, more homework and had more difficult tests.  When I started my third year of college in engineering the number of engineering students in my class had dropped to one tenth of the number who had started their freshman year.  Some students dropped out, but most moved to much "easier" majors, such as liberal arts, communications, accounting, or other arts-type programs.
Twenty-five years later, when our oldest son applied to colleges, the situation didn't seem to have gotten better.  In fact, it seemed to have gotten worse.  UC San Diego, for example, required a MUCH higher GPA and SAT score to be able to be accepted into an engineering program than any other program on campus.  They said that the engineering programs were "impacted" --which I learned meant they had many more applicants for engineering programs than they had "slots" for.  So they could raise the standards higher for those applicants.  I'm not sure if the engineering drop-out rate was higher. I have not seen any statistics on that.
This recent article on "Salary.com" 8 College Degrees with the Worst Return on Investment - Salary.com: points out that many college degrees have a very low return on investment.  Note that there are no mention of positions in science, math, engineering, law, business, or medicine on this low return list.
If we lived in a dictatorship, the Government could easily solve this problem by decreeing that universities would offer fewer programs in sociology, psychology, communications, liberal arts, fine arts, etc --and expand their departments in science, engineering, law, business & medicine.  That would make it more difficult to get into (and stay in) universities in the fields we don't need, and easier to get into the ones we do need.  It appears that China has been able to do this, for example.  Now they are cranking out many engineers, and apparently have a overabundance of scientists and engineers --so their supply & demand curve is out of balance the other way.
We can't do that in the United States, of course.  We have to use some sort of economic incentives to channel students into the fields we need, and encourage universities to balance their degree offerings with the needs of the country and the demands of the students applying to their schools.  We do have some "perverse incentives" that somewhat distort the economics.  For example, universities are "graded" on the number of students they can get through to graduation.  They don't get a higher score for graduating more students in math, science, engineering, or medicine.  So the leaders and decision-makers don't have any reason for expanding those departments.  Also, universities seem to work on a fixed cost per student.  Everyone pays the same tuition per credit-hour.  It's pretty clear that it costs more to teach classes in science, engineering or medicine.  For those classes, the university needs more laboratories, more computers, and generally higher paid professors.  Of course the reason those professors can command higher salaries is because they are in shorter supply in the first place.  So, the university chancellors have to make rational decisions using these costs.  If it costs 50% more to educate an engineer than a communication major, it is much easier to produce more communication majors.  So those departments are expanded, of course.
I think articles like this in magazines, newspapers and websites is a help in that it can inform students of the value of the various types of degrees.  It may help students demand for courses that will give them a better return on the investment they are making in higher education.  However, it appears that universities are not very sensitive to the demand from students.  I think we also need help from national and state policy.  State university systems should consider adjusting their degree offerings to meet the requirements of their states in the various fields --even if the total number of graduates are less.  Possibly some sort of weighting could be used in determining university performance where degrees in higher demand fields are scored higher than those in lower demand fields.  I think that ultimately, the solution will have to be financial and from the Federal level.  The US Department of Education needs to determine the nation's needs in various educational fields and then tailor their student loan and grant programs to provide incentives to get more students in the needed fields.  Higher loan amounts or lower interest rates could be offered for students in degree fields we need, while lower amounts or higher interest rates could be attached to student loans for degrees in less-needed fields.
The universities also need to do something about keeping students in the degree programs we need, and discourage transfers into the perceived "easier" programs.  There is no reason that the science, engineering & medical programs need to be "harder" than the liberal arts programs.  Part of the problem, I believe, is that those courses are taught by practitioners of those fields -- the experts.  An professor with a PhD in engineering may be a very good engineer, but is not necessarily a good "teacher."   -- Even looking at the textbooks used for the various programs shows that.  Engineering texts are typically very dry with lots of equations, while liberal arts books are much more interesting.  Hopefully, the internet will help change that.