by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report
November 5, 2025
After he graduates from the College of Wisconsin-Madison, Drew Wesson hopes to start a profession in strategic communication, a subject with higher-than-average job development and earnings.
One yr into his time on the college, Wesson turned extra strategic about this purpose. Like practically 1 in 3 of his classmates, he declared a second main to raised stand out in an unpredictable labor market.
It’s a part of a pattern that’s spreading nationwide, in keeping with a Hechinger Report evaluation of federal knowledge, as college students fret about getting jobs in an financial system that some concern is shifting sooner than a conventional faculty schooling can sustain.
“There’s sort of a concern of graduating and going out into the job market,” mentioned Wesson, a sophomore from Minneapolis who’s double-majoring in worldwide safety and journalism. “And having extra expertise and extra data and extra majors offers you a aggressive edge.”
The variety of college students at UW-Madison who double-major has grown by 25 p.c during the last decade, the information present. However double-majoring can be on the rise at personal, nonprofit schools throughout the nation, and at different public establishments, together with the College of California, San Diego, and the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Practically 5.4 million credentials — levels or certificates — had been earned by the 4.8 million faculty and college graduates in 2023-24, the latest yr for which the determine is offered. Meaning about 12 p.c left faculty with a couple of, in comparison with 6 p.c ten years earlier. Tutorial minors don’t rely as a credential and aren’t tracked..
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“College students are feeling a form of spiraling lack of management in a really dynamic labor market,” mentioned Rachel Slama, affiliate director of Cornell College’s Way forward for Studying Lab, which research how know-how and different improvements are altering schooling. “They’re most likely clinging to the one factor that’s of their management, which is the majors they select. They usually suppose that extra is extra.”
They might be proper, in keeping with one of many few research of this matter, by students at St. Lawrence College and Vanderbilt Regulation Faculty. College students who’ve one main in enterprise and a second in science, know-how, engineering or math, it discovered, earn extra than in the event that they majored in solely a type of disciplines, the 2016 research discovered.
Graduates who double-major are additionally 56 p.c much less seemingly to be laid off, have their pay minimize or undergo different destructive results in financial downturns, in keeping with one other research, launched final yr by researchers at Ohio State and 4 different universities. These outcomes present “the significance of various talent units,” the researchers concluded. If there’s a drop in demand for the talents related to one main, “a double main can pursue a job associated to the unaffected main.”
At Wisconsin, practically 6 in 10 college students in laptop science who decide a second main select the profitable self-discipline of knowledge science; the variety of jobs in knowledge science is projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to extend 34 p.c over concerning the subsequent 10 years, at salaries which can be practically twice the nationwide common.
The unemployment price amongst new bachelor’s diploma recipients is now larger than for employees general, and at its highest stage since 2014, not together with the pandemic years, in keeping with the Federal Reserve Financial institution of St. Louis. That’s partly as a result of synthetic intelligence and different components are reworking what employers want.
Practically half of latest graduates really feel underqualified to use for even entry-level jobs, a survey by the schooling know-how firm Cengage Group finds. Solely 30 p.c say they’ve full-time jobs associated to the fields that they studied.
In the meantime, schools and universities — historically gradual to remodel what and the way they train — are encouraging college students to mix majors as a sooner approach to sustain with modifications within the labor market, mentioned Taylor Odle, an assistant professor at UW-Madison who research the economics of schooling and the worth of credentials within the workforce.
“Establishments are considering strategically about the way to align their diploma applications with business, and it is perhaps by pairing two issues they have already got,” Odle mentioned.
There are different causes for the rising recognition of double majors. At UW-Madison, for instance, one issue propelling the expansion is that there aren’t any minors, famous Taylor Odle, an assistant professor there who research the economics of schooling and the worth of credentials within the workforce..
Double-majoring isn’t straightforward. It usually means incomes greater than the same old minimal variety of credit required to graduate, on prime of extracurricular and different obligations. Wesson, at UW-Madison, as an example, is an officer of scholar authorities, a reporter and photographer for the campus newspaper and an honors scholar.
Some separate majors have overlapping necessities. Even when they don’t, most universities and schools cost the identical tuition per semester irrespective of what number of programs undergraduates take. So until a second main extends the variety of semesters a scholar wants to finish required programs, or forces her or him to take extra courses within the summers, double-majoring doesn’t usually value extra or take longer.
In the meantime, extra college students are arriving at school having already knocked off credit by taking dual-enrollment and Superior Placement courses in highschool.
About 2.5 million highschool college students take part in twin enrollment, in keeping with an evaluation of federal knowledge by the Neighborhood School Analysis Middle at Lecturers School, Columbia College. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an impartial unit of Lecturers School.)
This implies they’ve room of their schedules in faculty for second majors, mentioned Kelle Parsons, who focuses on larger schooling as a principal researcher on the American Institutes for Analysis.
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For some college students, double-majoring makes extra sense than altering majors altogether. About 30 p.c of scholars change their majors no less than as soon as, and 10 p.c two or extra instances, in keeping with the U.S. Division of Schooling. Including a second main is much less drastic than dropping a primary one and beginning once more from scratch, mentioned Patrick Denice, an affiliate professor of sociology on the College of Western Ontario.
“For those who add a [second] main, you hedge your bets towards a altering labor market with out shedding these credit and that coursework you’ve already earned” towards the primary one, mentioned Denice, who has studied why college students at U.S. universities decide and alter their majors.
There’s but one more reason college students are more and more double-majoring. At the same time as they crowd into specialties related to profession alternatives, equivalent to enterprise and health-related disciplines — which collectively now account for practically 1 in 3 undergraduate fields of research — some are including second majors for which they merely have a ardour.
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“They’re making an attempt to fulfill their mother and father, who need them to be employed,” mentioned J. Wesley Null, vice provost for undergraduate schooling and tutorial affairs at Baylor College, the place there have been greater than twice as many double majors final yr than there have been in 2014. “However they’re additionally serious about a variety of interdisciplinary sorts of issues. They’ll mix biology with Sanskrit or Chinese language. These actually vivid college students have a variety of various pursuits.”
On the College of Chicago, the place the variety of double majors has additionally greater than doubled, “I see college students committing to at least one profession however desirous to have extra breadth,” mentioned Melina Hale, dean of the school. “They’re going and exploring all of those different majors and discovering one they love.”
Double-majoring can be “an effective way for college kids to show that they know the way to suppose in numerous methods,” mentioned Hale, herself a biologist who has collaborated with engineers. “For those who’re going right into a job in finance and have a deep background in historical past, you’re bringing alternative ways of approaching issues.”
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This mind-set is pushing nonetheless one other pattern: Extra college students nationwide are incomes certificates, which they’ll get in a matter of months and alongside their levels, in topics equivalent to enterprise administration. Seventeen p.c of bachelor’s diploma recipients additionally completed faculty with no less than one certificates in 2023-24, the Nationwide Scholar Clearinghouse Analysis Middle stories.
Generally known as “stackable credentials,” these sorts of certificates “have been talked about for a very long time,” mentioned Ryan Lufkin, vice chairman of worldwide tutorial technique on the instructional know-how firm Instructure. “And now there’s actually demand for them.”
That’s as a result of — like double-majoring and minoring — they make candidates stand out to employers, mentioned Odle, at UW-Madison.
College students, he mentioned, “are attempting to emphasise their attractiveness within the labor market. They’re making an attempt to cowl their bases.”
Contact author Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Sign.
This story about double majors was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, impartial information group centered on inequality and innovation in schooling.
Information evaluation by Marina Villeneuve.
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