This article screams survivorship bias so much that it's hard to take without modest amount of salt. The paragraph that takes law as example makes a case that,

This article screams survivorship bias so much that it's hard to take without modest amount of salt. The paragraph that takes law as example makes a case that, based on the data from the linked Hamilton Project study (which itself used data from American Community Survey), those who majored in foreign languages and ended up being lawyer, judge or magistrate may earn a median of $148,000 annually, a whopping $54,000 more than those who pursued pre-law whose median $94,000. Here's the catch: 15% of those who pursued pre-law ended up being in the said profession, compared to only 4% for the said foreign language major[1]. If the median is to be the indicator for which major is the most valuable for the profession, then behold: Chemical Engineering takes the top spot at $186,000. In fact, among the top ten majors with the highest medians, only 3 of them are from the arts[2]. It's as if that within a certain field, people having rare expertise or knowledge are prized more. I wouldn't go as far as saying humanities degree is worthless, but I'd say it's way too overpriced, compared to the high risk that you won't land a job that pays for the degree. There can only be so many managers in one company. One of the reasons why liberal arts is associated with elite caste is that they are financially stable enough to afford the risk. [1]: There were actually two types of foreign language majors, one being "Other Foreign Languages" which is the one used here, while the other one is "French, German, Latin and Other Common Foreign Language Studies", which had a lower median of $90,500. [2] The top ten median for the occupation "Lawyers, Judges, Magistrates, and Judicial Workers" were: 1. Chemical Engineering (186169.72), 2. Humanities (159796.36), 3. Mechanical Engineering (159796.36), 4. Molecular Biology (154469.44), 5. Molecular Biology (154469.44), 6. Physics (154284.3), 7. Zoology (151273.7), 8. Biochemical Sciences (149143.55), 8. Other Foreign Languages (147582.19), 9. United States History (143366.11), 10. Physiology (131770.11)