There seems to be a pie chart that makes the Facebook rounds every few months about which college majors offer the most lucrative paychecks and which ones to avoid like the plague.
One of the major problems with how those figures get tallied is they don’t take into account the post-grad options that await the more malleable performing arts and liberal arts majors.
Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business published an article on its blog about the zero-to-sixty journey students from the school’s unique dual MSA/MBA degree took this past year—many of whom majored in seemingly less lucrative fields like philosophy and comparative literature.
The 61 D’Amore-McKim Graduate School of Professional Accounting (GSPA) students that comprised the program’s 51st cohort immersed themselves at one of the “global seven” public accounting firms— PwC, KPMG, Ernst & Young, BDO, Grant Thornton, and Deloitte—where they worked closely alongside program alumni.
Students returned to campus three months later with “job offers in a sector that they had little to no experience” a year prior. Dan Archabal, Executive Professor and GSPA Accounting Academic Specialist, notices a palpable growth among students before and after their internships.“It’s interesting to watch them when they come back from working in a firm. They’re working so hard and they come back with a desirable level of self-confidence.”
It turns out this is par for the course in the GSPA dual degree program, which has a 100% job placement rate.
Do you know a classics major who’s sick of bar-backing? The 15-month dual degree program, which consists of three 4-month sessions and an internship, is especially designed for liberal arts graduates.
Brian Hannagan MSA/MBA ’16 was an English Lit major who worked for years in the nonprofit sector before he found his true calling. “I was dealing with money and accounting and saw what exactly goes into a budget…which is what drove me to get an accounting degree, plus the MBA at Northeastern.” Hannagan was offered a plum gig at BDO after his internship.
“I love teaching students with liberal arts backgrounds because they are critical thinkers with a broad base of information to draw from,” said Associate Professor of Accounting Wendy Bailey.