Most Popular Study Fields

_source

Hey Steemians,

I am here again and this time I would be looking at data on the most popular study fields for bachelors degrees in the USA. I was able to get data aggregated by National Center for Education Statistics. They have data as far back as 1970-1971 and the most recent data is from 2014-2015.

_{Data Source}

You can see from the table the highest number of bachelors degree was awarded in the field of Business with 363,799 degrees awarded.Health professions and related programs is second with 216,228 degrees awarded while Social Sciences and history is third with 166,944 degrees awarded.See Visualization of top 15 fields below:

---

Fields of study with strongest growth

---

So there you have it, the most popular study fields based on the most recent data but which field of study has expereinced the strongest growth over the past decade. For this analysis I simply took data for 2004-2005 and tried to compare the stats of each field of study to its most recent stats

Field of study	Bachelors Degrees Awarded 2004-05	Bachelors Degrees Awarded 2014-15	% Change
Military technologies and applied sciences	21	276	1214.29%
Parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies	17,948	49,006	173.04%
Health professions and related programs	80,685	216,228	167.99%
Homeland security, law enforcement, andfirefighting	25,211	62,723	148.79%
Legal professions and studies	1,991	4,420	122.00%
Communications technologies	2,523	5,135	103.53%
Mathematics and statistics	11,171	21,853	95.62%
Library science	52	99	90.38%
Multi/interdisciplinary studies	26,478	47,556	79.61%
Public administration and social services	19,447	34,363	76.70%
Biological and biomedical sciences	65,915	109,896	66.72%
Physical sciences and science technologies	18,025	30,038	66.65%
Psychology	73,645	117,557	59.63%
Agriculture and natural resources	23,002	36,277	57.71%
Visual and performing arts	61,148	95,832	56.72%
Precision production	31	48	54.84%
Engineering	64,707	97,858	51.23%
Theology and religious vocations	6,945	9,708	39.78%
Social sciences and history	128,036	166,944	30.39%
Philosophy and religious studies	8,717	11,072	27.02%
Transportation and materials moving	3,748	4,711	25.69%
Communication, journalism, and related programs	72,715	90,650	24.66%
Family and consumer sciences/human sciences	20,074	24,584	22.47%
Business	311,574	363,799	16.76%
Engineering technologies	14,837	17,238	16.18%
Liberal arts and sciences, general studies,and humanities	37,962	43,647	14.98%
Computer and information sciences	54,111	59,581	10.11%
Foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics	18,386	19,493	6.02%
Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies	7,569	7,782	2.81%
Architecture and related services	9,237	9,090	-1.59%
Education	105,451	91,623	-13.11%
English language and literature/letters	54,379	45,847	-15.69%

From the analysis,Military Technologies and applied science experienced the strongest growth with a percentage increase of 1214.29% increase, the percentage increase might be a bit flattering due to the scanty number of degrees awarded in this field compared to other fields.Parks,recreation,leisure and fitness studies expereinced the second strongest growth with 173.04% increase while Health professions and related programs experienced the 3rd strongest growth with 167.99% increase in number of degrees awarded.

There are a couple of fields I expected to experience stronger growth but they experienced very little or no growth at all, wonder if anyone finds that strange.Architecture and related services,Education and English language actually experienced a reduced number of awarded bachelors degrees with 1.59%,13.11% and 15.69% percentage decrease respectively.

---

Thanks for reading my post.Let me know your view on this post in the comments, I read and appreciate every comment.Each post I make takes considerable time and effort,please support me by upvoting and resteeming if you enjoyed it.Keep an eye on my blog for my next post. You can also follow me @datageek

---