8. Drama and Theater Arts
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Unemployment rate: 7.1%
Unemployment rate for recent grads: 7.8%
Median salary: $40,000
Median salary for recent grads: $26,000
Projected job growth for this field, 2010-2020: 4%
Likelihood of working retail: 2.1 times average
Unless you're Will Smith or Angelina Jolie, drama will probably not pay off. In fact, the starting salary for a drama and theater arts major is the lowest on our list – 30% below the median for the top 100 majors and only 2.3 times the federal poverty level. To further complicate things, theater and film are competitive fields, and job growth is stalling out. Nearly nine in ten theater grads will end up in another field, such as office work, education or sales. Drama students are also more than twice as likely as other college grads to end up working retail after school.
ThinkstockUnemployment rate: 7.1%
Unemployment rate for recent grads: 7.8%
Median salary: $40,000
Median salary for recent grads: $26,000
Projected job growth for this field, 2010-2020: 4%
Likelihood of working retail: 2.1 times average
Unless you're Will Smith or Angelina Jolie, drama will probably not pay off. In fact, the starting salary for a drama and theater arts major is the lowest on our list – 30% below the median for the top 100 majors and only 2.3 times the federal poverty level. To further complicate things, theater and film are competitive fields, and job growth is stalling out. Nearly nine in ten theater grads will end up in another field, such as office work, education or sales. Drama students are also more than twice as likely as other college grads to end up working retail after school.
