What is the relationship between the difficulty of a major and its "practicality"?

[Chemistry_Guy]

Some majors tend to attract students that are weeded out of other majors. It has been like this at every institution with which I have been associated. In engineering and the sciences, the intro level classes typically have 30%+ attrition after the first course, with a high percentage of those students going on to do well in another discipline. You typically do not see the reverse.

In addition, universities are simultaneously under a lot of pressure to graduate students as well as to increase the rigor of their competitive programs. In my case, this is manifested in such stats as medical school acceptance rate. Since medical school is competitive and GPA matters, an 'A' in a science class at my institution is a significant accomplishment and a student with a 3.5 GPA is nearly guaranteed acceptance. On the other hand, there are some [department omitted for political reasons] classes where 90% of the students end up getting an 'A'. The pre-med program is under pressure to be rigorous, the [ xxx ] program is under pressure to have a high graduation percentage.

I would not say that the relationship is between "practicality" and difficulty, but is instead related to how competitive the field is that the graduates are entering.

[MN-Born-n-Raised]

Most would agree that technical degrees are tougher than a non-technical degree. In nearly every degree, the workload is more intense.

That said, I know many brilliant technical minds that are inept when it comes to business related topics. Additionally, I know many exceptional english majors who cannot hack a quarter of Calc. For the record, Calc is pretty easy in comparison to many technical classes. So if you struggle in Calc, expect to be blown away in dozens of other technical classes.

[j7r6s]

At an individual level, "easy" vs. "hard" are relative terms. But they do become relevant when considering overall populations. The number of people willing and able to complete a psychology degree is greater than the number of people willing and able to complete an engineering degree which is greater than the number of people willing and able to complete a doctorate of medicine which is greater than the number of people willing and able to play in the NFL. That alone accounts for a lot of salary discrepancy. Most people are physically capable of being a plumber, but they're not willing to endure the training followed by potentially spending every day in raw sewage so they don't make as much as plumbers do. Sometimes, there are somewhat artificial barriers which prop up the salaries. For example, there are probably many more people willing and able to complete medical school than there are slots in medical schools. You can see that now in the legal field. As more and more law schools opened, the unemployment rates have gone up and the salaries have dropped.

[BigCityDreamer]

Originally Posted by King of Kensington

Just because a major has high future earnings doesn't mean it's ipso facto more difficult, just because it has lower future earnings doesn't mean it's easier.

The vast majority of people go to college to land a future job. If it were easy to have a high-paying career, then everybody would be doing it.

I'll let you connect the dots.

[King of Kensington]

I had a group of friends who attended a business program at a leading public university. They really looked down on economics majors (not in the business school) for some reason, for supposedly taking the easier "backdoor" route. Though of course economics is wayyy more intellectually challenging than accounting or marketing.