Business is the most popular major in college by a wide margin. In the 2021–22 academic year, U.S. colleges and universities awarded 375,400 bachelor’s degrees in business, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That accounts for roughly 19 percent of all bachelor’s degrees conferred that year, nearly three times the number awarded to the next closest field.
The Six Most Popular Majors
Out of the 2.0 million bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2021–22, about 58 percent fell into just six fields of study. Here’s how they ranked:
- Business: 375,400 degrees (19 percent)
- Health professions and related programs: 263,800 degrees (13 percent)
- Social sciences and history: 151,100 degrees (7 percent)
- Biological and biomedical sciences: 131,500 degrees (7 percent)
- Psychology: 129,600 degrees (6 percent)
- Engineering: 123,000 degrees (6 percent)
The “business” category is broad. It includes management, marketing, finance, accounting, and related support services. That breadth partly explains why business consistently leads the pack: students with very different career goals, from corporate finance to hospitality management, all end up counted under the same umbrella.
Why Business Has Held the Top Spot
Business has been the most popular bachelor’s degree in the U.S. for decades, and a few factors keep it there. The major is widely perceived as versatile. A business degree doesn’t lock you into a single career path the way nursing or engineering might. Graduates move into sales, consulting, operations, human resources, entrepreneurship, and dozens of other roles across virtually every industry.
Availability matters too. Nearly every four-year college in the country offers a business program, and many have multiple concentrations within it. Students who enter college undecided often gravitate toward business because it feels like a safe, employable choice. Employers across sectors recruit business graduates, which reinforces the perception that the degree “works” in the job market.
Health Professions Are Gaining Ground
The second most popular field, health professions, has grown significantly over the past decade. At 263,800 degrees in 2021–22, it now represents 13 percent of all bachelor’s degrees. This category covers nursing, public health, health administration, clinical sciences, and other healthcare-related programs.
The growth reflects real labor market demand. Healthcare is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy, and many positions require at least a bachelor’s degree. Nursing programs in particular have expanded enrollment in response to persistent workforce shortages. For students who want a clear, direct path from degree to job, health professions offer something business often doesn’t: a specific credential tied to a specific role.
What the Numbers Mean for You
Popularity doesn’t necessarily mean a major is the best fit for any individual student. A field with hundreds of thousands of graduates each year also means more competition for entry-level positions. Business graduates, for example, often find that standing out requires internships, strong networking, or a specialized concentration like finance or supply chain management rather than a general business administration degree.
On the other hand, less popular majors aren’t automatically harder to monetize. Engineering, despite ranking sixth by total graduates, consistently produces some of the highest starting salaries among bachelor’s degree holders. Psychology, with nearly 130,000 graduates per year, is enormously popular but often requires a graduate degree before it leads to licensed practice and higher earning potential.
The concentration of degrees in just six fields also highlights how many other options go underexplored. Computer science, education, communications, visual and performing arts, and dozens of other disciplines each produce fewer graduates, but that can mean less competition and strong demand in certain job markets. If you’re choosing a major, the popularity rankings are useful context, but the better questions are what skills the program builds, what career paths it opens, and whether the job market for those paths is growing or shrinking.
How These Categories Are Defined
It’s worth understanding that NCES groups majors into broad categories, which can obscure meaningful differences. “Social sciences and history” lumps together economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and history into a single bucket of 151,100 degrees. A student graduating with an economics degree and one graduating with an anthropology degree have very different job prospects, but they show up in the same line of data.
Similarly, “biological and biomedical sciences” includes everything from pre-med biology tracks to ecology to biochemistry. The 131,500 degrees in this category represent students headed in wildly different directions, from medical school applicants to future lab researchers to people who will pivot into unrelated careers entirely. When you see a major’s popularity ranking, keep in mind that you’re looking at a broad umbrella, not a single career pipeline.