Philosophy majors learn diverse ways of thinking and looking at the world. Public policy majors might be expert at analyzing events and able to write a killer paper.

While students in such fields that generate transferrable skills likely will not find themselves earning big salaries right out of college like their classmates who majored in more technical subjects such as computer science or engineering, such “stealth majors,” especially those who round out their coursework with a diverse slate of extracurricular activities and internships, could narrow the earnings gap with their more technical peers as their careers develop, experts suggest.

“Over time, people with different college majors start to look alike,” says David Deming, who studies the college-to-career pathway as the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School. “There is something about going to college that helps you in the long run, but it’s not really, primarily the specific major. It’s going to college and the broad transferable skills. You learn how to write, how to think.”

There is some thought that such skills, often associated with broader, less-technical courses of study, may be growing more important in a workplace rapidly changing amid AI and other technological forces.

Non-Stealth Majors With Immediate Results: What the Data Says

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and elsewhere bears out a point education analysts often make that obtaining a college degree, or any post-high-school degree or credential, leads to higher earnings and rates of employment. And the rate of workers with such credentials is rising in America – now at nearly 55%t, according to Lumina Foundation.

But though earning a degree itself can provide a big boost, data show clear earnings winners by major in the years right after graduation, and – (hint) – philosophy majors aren’t among the top ones.

Undergraduate majors in STEM fields such as computer science, engineering, and health care, and also some business-related subjects, earn the highest returns on investment early in their careers, according to recent analyses by the New York Federal Reserve, Payscale, the HEA Group, and others.

STEM fields also dominate the list of fastest-growing professions of the coming decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Such majors have topped the return-on-investment lists for years or decades now, says Michael Itzkowitz, founder and president of HEA Group and former director of the Obama administration’s college scorecard.

“That doesn’t mean that these majors are necessarily better than any other major,” Itzkowitz says. “However, in terms of pure economics, they are more likely to pay more. That is something that existed before and something that continues to exist.”

The Value of a Well-Rounded College Experience

But don’t count out other graduates who, rather than learning a specific set of technical skills in college that will lead directly to a job, nevertheless may be gathering the types of transferrable skills to help set themselves up for potential success down their career pathway.

Part of the reason why the gap may narrow is that technical skills, while valuable right out of college, age quickly, more so than transferrable skills, Deming says.

Take computer science, for example: “Everything now is AI, machine learning,” Deming says. “But if you majored in computer science 20 years ago, you didn’t do any of that stuff. And so what it means is that the things you learn that are technical and career ready today have a shelf life. They depreciate.”

That doesn’t mean workers with STEM degrees necessarily will lose all their advantage. After all, some learn newer skills on the job or get promoted into managing more recent graduates who do have the latest, cutting-edge skills. Plus, who’s to say they can’t also draw from their own transferrable skills in addition to technical ones, as Deming points out.

“A major is just a set of courses,” Deming says. “There are a lot of ways to get the skills you need in college that go beyond your major.

“If you major in philosophy, but you also take a bunch of computer science courses and you develop your own website and … you get really proficient with AI, [and] maybe you start a company, then you would profile to employers as somebody who’s quite technically competent, even though you have a humanities major,” Deming adds. “Conversely, you might major in computer science, but join the philosophy club and do debate.”

He and others suggest such a well-rounded college experience may do more to help ensure long-term success amid rapid change driven by AI and other workplace disruptors than any one type of degree.

Stealth Majors? What Will Work in the Future of Work?

Such rapid change also raises the possibility that earnings patterns after graduation that have held true for ages might not always hold true. Itzkowitz notes that current data measuring the ROI of college majors reflects students who graduated years ago and can’t yet determine what will happen to today’s or tomorrow’s graduates.

“A lot of folks have been thinking that critical skills that teach students how to ask questions are going to be increasingly important over the next few decades,” Itzkowitz says. “We have technology that enables us to know the answers, but it’s ultimately what questions we are asking that’s going to help us increase productivity and remain globally competitive.

“As we think about these specific kinds of college majors, there are certain fields of study that focus on critical thinking skills, whether that be sociology or public policy analysis,” he adds. “These are things that help us to think critically about the world that we grow up in, systems, and those who live around us.”

Deming and Aneesh Raman, chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, cite philosophy as an example of a major that teaches such future-of-work skills.

“The study of philosophy and ethics are about to become some of the ‘it’ fields in this next era of work,” Raman told WorkingNation recently. “These are the fields to focus on if you want to understand how to think, how to learn, and how to navigate big moments of change like the one the world of work is in right now.

“We’re already starting to see major employers say they are looking for engineers who don’t just know how to code, but understand ethics and can bring in ethical frameworks to how they deploy new technologies like AI,” he adds.

[Read more of Raman’s thoughts on the importance of transferrable skills here.]

Deming sees the philosophy major growing in popularity at Harvard and believes it teaches skills employers value. But he suggests employers also want evidence of capability through work experience and extracurricular activities to complement what philosophy majors have learned in class – perhaps a matrix of hard and soft skills that paint a bigger picture.

“Employers want people who have … high-order skills, or soft skills – things like: Can you work well in a team? Do you make good decisions and solve problems with limited information? Are you adaptable to change? Do you have a strong work ethic and high agency, meaning you’ll go and do things independently without having to be supervised?” he says. “Those are the kinds of things that I think you do learn in college.”

“I think, actually, you could find examples of people succeeding in the job market with every major under the sun,” Deming says. “[It’s] about the total package, not just the major.”

WorkingNation contributing writer Victoria Lim contributed to the reporting for this article.