The price of a college degree in the US continues to tick higher — so it’s little wonder many high schoolers are asking: is it still worth it?
Tuition fees and living expenses are rising faster than the growth of financial aid.
Around 40 million Americans carry $1.6 trillion in student debt — and most are no longer getting a reprieve on repayments.
Parents now cover an average of 48 percent of the cost of college, up from 38 percent just a decade ago, according to JPMorgan analysis.
Now, a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has looked into when college still pays off — and when it doesn’t.
‘Majors providing technical training — that is, quantitative and analytical skills — earn the highest return, including engineering, math and computers,’ the report found.
The top degrees for earnings are almost all in the engineering disciplines.
Aerospace engineering graduates earn a median of $125,000 by the middle of their career, according to a study from the Fed.
Degrees providing ‘technical training’ tend to lead to higher salaries than other majors
Computer science is also lucrative, with a median wage of $115,000 by the same point.
On the other hand, degrees that tend to pay the least — and therefore may not be seen as worth the cost — include education, which earns a median salary of $60,000, and anthropology, which earns workers a median $70,000 by the middle of their career.
The average mid-career earnings of Americans with education degrees or theology majors is also lower at $60,000.
Those with health services majors can expect to be earning $65,000 at the mid-point of their career, while those with fine arts degrees can expect a median salary of $70,000, according to latest data from February 2025.
With rising costs and growing doubts about the return on that investment, fewer students are finishing their degrees.
The number of graduates with a bachelor’s or associate degree fell in 2023-24 for the third year in a row, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.
But college is still a good investment for most students, the New York Fed found.
The return on investment for a college education is around 12.5 percent a year for the median graduate, according to the research conducted by economists Jason Abel and Richard Deitz.
Tuition fees have risen to an average of $41,500 a year in 2025
This figure ‘easily exceeds the threshold for a sound investment,’ the economists found.
By comparison, the stock market yields a long-term return of around 8 percent a year.
‘Our estimates suggest that even a relatively high-cost college education tends to yield a healthy return for the typical graduate,’ the researchers found.
‘College graduates earn a substantial wage premium in the labor market compared to those with only a high school diploma, and this premium tends to grow over one’s career,’ the researchers found.
It is most worth it for degrees that will lead to the highest paying jobs, according to the findings.
The median college graduate with a bachelor’s degree earns around $80,000 while their peer with only a high school diploma earned a median of $47,000.
Over a lifetime of work that wage premium well outstrips the costs of forking out for a degree, the researchers found.
Economists Jason Abel and Richard Deitz found a college degree was still worth it for the majority of students
The average yearly cost of college in 2025 for various degree types
However, for around one quarter of students the return on investment is not worth it, according to the study released last month.
Factors can include the length of time spent studying and therefore paying more fees, as well as earning less than the median graduate.
The researchers found that for the bottom quarter of college graduate earners there was ‘very little difference’ in the wages earned than their peers with just a high school diploma.
‘We estimate a 2.6 percent rate of return for the 25th percentile of college graduates in 2024, making college a questionable investment for this group,’ they explained.
