Which College Programs Lead to the Largest Variety of Jobs?

By Bryan P. Grady, Ph.D., Assistant Executive Director for Labor Market Information

It’s back-to-school time across South Carolina. While some students know the exact path that they want their career to take, many others may not have a clear idea. What should you study if you want to keep your options open? Thanks to a new data set built for the recently published 2026 Supply Gap Analysis, we can find out.

The Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office obtained DEW’s unemployment insurance wage records and the Commission on Higher Education's graduation records and provided us with the merged, de-identified results. It was then possible to see which fields of study, as defined by Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) codes, led to which occupations. These data were not previously available, but since 2024, employers have reported their employees’ Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes in those wage records. We considered a particular CIP-to-SOC relationship relevant if at least 30 people had that pair of codes, and we included only the CIP of the highest degree earned in South Carolina. After processing the data, there were 788 CIP-SOC code pairs found in the wage records.

Here are the fields of study that led to at least ten unique occupations:

The top spot is held by liberal arts and sciences, with at least 30 graduates landing in 86 distinct occupations. Degrees in this field of study, however, are almost always earned by students who receive an associate degree with the intent of transferring to a four-year college or university. 

Excluding that, the big winner is business. A general degree in business administration and management has placed graduates in 73 different occupations. Even the more specialized business fields of finance, accounting, and marketing – as denoted by a CIP code starting with 52 – are in double digits. While business is such a common major that one would expect a wider range of occupations, careers as varied as coaches, event planners, and firefighters were found among business graduates.

Next highest are biology (43) and psychology (40), which form a second tier. As one would expect, these careers are overwhelmingly in the health or medical space, but there are substantial numbers of financial analysts, paralegals, and preschool teachers among them. From there, 11 more fields of study led to 10 or more distinct occupations.

For more information about education, training, and careers, visit findyourfuture.sc.gov for links to resources provided by numerous state agencies. You can also stop by your local SC Works center or visit scworks.org/vec for personalized assistance.