What can you do with a bachelor’s degree in psychology? Like this title, the actual answer is complicated

Stop me if you have already heard this one. Psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate majors in the U.S.; in the last year the data are available (2014-2015), 117,557 bachelor’s degrees in psychology were awarded. Said another way, in the past nine years, 1 million individuals received psychology baccalaureates (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017).

Asking the question “what can you do with a bachelor’s degree in psychology?” is a very relevant question to a lot of people. Allow me to assure you from the start that if someone tells you the answer to that question is “nothing,” that answer is patently false. About 25 percent of psychology baccalaureates go to graduate school in psychology, about 18 percent go on for more education but not in psychology, and 57 percent are workforce graduates (Lin, Christidis & Stamm, 2017).

If no one was getting a job with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, that tidbit of information would have made the news by now and I suspect the popularity of the major (as evidenced by annual number of graduates) would decrease substantially. But a quick, short answer, such as “nothing,” is a blurb and a sound bite — easy to understand yet meaningless. The actual answer is much more complicated and nuanced, and it goes like this — the psychology bachelor’s degree qualifies a person for a large number of jobs, but the degree does not uniquely qualify a person for any particular job.

Huh?

First, let’s start with the large number of jobs part. Below you can see the Holy Grail list of potential jobs with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I don’t know where this list started, perhaps with Marky Lloyd and/or Drew Appleby, curated over time by Paul Hettich and/or Jane Halonen, but it seems now that I am the curator of “the list.”

To say that a bachelor’s degree in psychology prepares you for no job is simply ludicrous. But let’s think about the more nuanced part — a bachelor’s degree in psychology does not exclusively entitle a person to any of the jobs in this list. Using O*NET from the U.S. Department of Labor (2017) for the following bulleted data, allow me to explain what I mean by psychology’s lack of exclusivity.

• For a job like animal trainer, the vast majority of individuals with this job have a high school diploma (or less) as their highest educational attainment. So a bachelor’s degree (in any field) is not necessarily a prerequisite requirement.
• In order to be a claims supervisor (claims examiner) for an insurance company, nearly 70 percent of those individuals have a bachelor’s degree. This type of position can be filled by individuals from many different majors.
• To serve as a corrections officer, 89 percent of individuals in this career have a high school diploma or equivalent. Psychology majors can do well in this area, but as you can probably understand, so do criminal justice majors, sociology majors, and others.
• Thirty percent of labor relations specialists hold bachelor’s degrees, and 25 percent hold master’s degrees — a psychology major could certainly attain this job, but will sometimes be competing with others with higher educational attainment.
• Technical writers typically require some college (35 percent associate’s degree and 33 percent bachelor’s degree), but as you can imagine, a psychology major competing for this position would also be competing with individuals who were English majors in college.

It is my hope that these examples illustrate the nuance and complexity of discussing career options for psychology workforce graduates. There are many, many job possibilities, but there is also much competition awaiting in the workplace due to the lack of exclusivity. Psychology majors, no matter what the career trajectory, need to be thinking about, cultivating and honing their skill sets; in that regard, I highly encourage you to review the works of Miller and Carducci (2015) and Strohmetz et al. (2015). Do not be passive about your future, hoping that it “all comes out in the wash” — be forcefully empowered to be your own best ally and advocate for a satisfying and successful future.

References

Lin, L., Christidis, P., & Stamm, K. (2017, October). The path to becoming a psychologist. Monitor on Psychology, 48(9), 17.

Miller, M.J., & Carducci, B.J. (2015). Student perceptions of knowledge, skills, ad abilities desired by potential employers of psychology majors. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1, 38-47.  doi:10.1037/stl0000015.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2017). Degrees in psychology conferred by postsecondary institutions, by level of degree and sex of student: Selected years, 1945-50 through 2014-15 [Table 325.80]. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_325.80.asp?current=yes.

Strohmetz, D.B., Dolinsky, B, Jhangiani, R.S., Posey, D.C., Hardin, E.E., Shyu, V., & Klein, E. (2015). The skillsful major: Psychology curricula in the 21st century. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1, 200-207.  doi:10.1037/stl0000037.

U.S. Department of Labor. (2017). O*NET Online. Retrieved from https://www.onetonline.org/.

Re-posted with permission from the American Psychological Association’s Psychology Student Network.