Communications
It has a reputation as the safe, flexible choice. Half its graduates are doing work you can get without a degree at all.
Written by the Sidequest team. Reviewed 2026-09-05.
Try the career before you pick the major
Writing something true, short and on time is the whole degree. Try five minutes of it first.
What you know so far
Town pool to close
- •the town says it ran out of money
- •but the numbers do not add up
a story, and no question yet
The obvious story, “the pool is closing,” is already everywhere. Write the one question you’d chase instead.
Try a day as a journalist
A short, playful taste of the real work.
Public relations specialist is the big one, and there are about six of those for every journalist. They earn $9,250 a year more in the middle. Journalist, marketer and social media work take most of the rest.
Fifteen hours in class, 30 on your own. Less reading than most degrees here and far more writing, nearly all of it to a word count and a deadline somebody else set.
Where people end up
Public relations is where most of them go, and it is bigger than people expect: there are about six public relations specialists working in the country for every journalist, and they earn $9,250 a year more in the middle of the range.
Journalism is the smaller side and it is safer than its reputation. The people who took it are more likely to be working, and more likely to be working somewhere that wanted the degree, than the people who took the wider communications degree instead.
The rest spread into marketing, social media, internal communication at big companies, and the part of any organisation that writes what it says in public. What travels between all of them is being able to write something short, on time, that does what it was meant to do.
What a week is like
You take four to six classes at once, which comes out to about 15 credit hours a semester. It is that same load every semester for four years: 120 credits, eight semesters, done.
About 15 of those hours are spent sitting in class. The other 30 are work you do on your own, two hours behind every hour you spend in a room. Call it 45 hours a week.
It is spread across seven days rather than stacked into five, so you can keep your evenings or you can keep your weekends, not usually both. What it does not leave is much slack in the weeks when two big things land on the same day.
A waking week is about 112 hours. This is the share of it the degree takes.
- In class15 hours
- Work on your own30 hours
- Yours67 hours
What those 45 hours are spent on.
with other people
Rooms of thirty rather than three hundred, on how people talk each other into things, how the news decides what matters, and why one argument lands and the next one does not.
on your own
Studies and theory, and noticeably less of it than a psychology or criminal justice degree asks for. The reading is not the part that makes this hard.
on your ownthe hard part
News stories, press releases, scripts, every one of them with a word count and a time on it. One course usually in your second year is where people find out whether they can do that, and it is the class people in this field name years later when they are asked which one changed them.
with other people
Public speaking is a required course here, not something you can quietly avoid. You stand up, you are timed, and the room marks you.
with other people
Three or four of you building a real campaign for a real organisation, which is also how you find out what you are like when a group has to agree on something.
- Communication classes10%
- Research methods classes0%
- Everything else you still have to take90%
- Classes you pick yourself0%
One credit in ten is communication. The other nine are what the university asks of everybody, and you choose none of them.
How much do you make?
The degree everyone calls the safe one is not the safe one. Journalism, the one parents worry about, pays $56,278 four years out. Communications pays $56,359. That is a difference of eighty one dollars a year.
Right out of college
$56,359
A communications graduate four years out earns $56,359 on average, and it counts people who went to work and not back in school.
Midway through
$88,000
Between 35 and 45, the average communications graduate earns $88,000.
At the height of it
$135,150
The best paid tenth of public relations specialists earn $135,150.
What moves the money here is picking the specific version rather than the general one. Public relations and advertising, the degree about getting a message in front of people and knowing whether it landed, pays $63,560, and a third as many people take it.
The other number is worse for the safe story. Half of communications graduates are doing work you can get without a degree. For journalism graduates it is fewer than half.
Communications is one word covering four real degrees, and this is what each pays four years after people finish.
- Public relations and advertising$63,560
- Communication and media studies$56,359
- Journalism$56,278
- Radio, television and digital$50,497
The most specific one on the list pays the most. The broad one, which is the one most people pick, does not.
The average money still owed on student loans
$23,000
The standard plan clears it in ten years.
Is this you?
The reading here is lighter than in most majors and the writing is heavier. Somewhere in your second year a course arrives that hands you a word count and a time and marks you on whether you hit both. People who went through it name that class years afterwards as the one that changed how they write, and it is also the class that tells some people this is not for them. If a school matters to you, look up whether it makes every student pair this degree with a second subject and do real work outside the classroom before they let you graduate. Some do, and it is a bigger difference than any ranking.
Tap any that sound like you.
This is probably you if
Probably not you if
What people who did it say
abathur
Hacker News, July 2023
"I'm not sure how common this is, but newswriting (a sophomore-level course) was the weed-out class for all mass comm degrees at the state university I attended. I went into a summer newswriting class with quite a bit of writing experience and it still had an impact on me."
VonGuard
Hacker News, November 2019
"Spent 12 years at a tech magazine and was making $70K at the end. Was laid off for being too expensive. Now I work at a large tech company and make double that."
grecy
Hacker News, December 2022
"I gave up a Software Engineering career to become a content creator... I would absolutely be earning more cash if I stuck at my software career. I willingly put my hand in the air and said 'I don't want more money, I want a different life.'"
Questions people ask
- Is a communications degree worth it?
- The pay is middling at $56,359 four years out, and half of the people who finish are doing work you can get without a degree. What decides it is the specific version you pick and what you do alongside it: public relations and advertising pays $7,201 a year more than the general degree.
- What can you do with a communications degree?
- Public relations is the biggest destination by a distance, then marketing, social media, internal communication inside large organisations, and journalism. Public relations specialists earn $74,750 in the middle and $135,150 at the top tenth.
- Is communications an easy major?
- The reading is lighter than most. The writing is not: nearly all of it comes with a word count and a deadline, and the news writing course in your second year is the one people name as the one that sorted them out.
- Communications or journalism?
- On the numbers, journalism holds up better than its reputation. The two pay within a hundred dollars a year of each other four years out, and fewer journalism graduates are out of work or working somewhere the degree was never needed.
- How many hours a week is a communications degree?
- About 45, like any degree. Fifteen in class, thirty on your own. Where it differs is the split, with more of your own hours going into writing and group campaign work than into reading.
Where these numbers come from
- Median earnings four years out, loan debt, how much programs vary, and what each degree in this family pays: College Scorecard, field of study data, June 2026 release. Checked 2026-08-18.
- What share of each year is in the major, counted in credits: Arizona State University, published major map, 2024-2025. Checked 2026-09-05.
- How many years the standard loan plan runs: Code of Federal Regulations, title 34 section 685.208, the tiered standard repayment plan. Checked 2026-08-24.
- What one credit hour means in class time and work on your own: Code of Federal Regulations, title 34 section 600.2, the definition of a credit hour. Checked 2026-08-25.
- What graduates of this major and of journalism earn between the ages of 35 and 45, and how many of each are out of work or in work that did not need the degree: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates. Checked 2026-08-25.
- The top tenth of pay in public relations work, which the height estimate is built from: Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupational employment and wage statistics, 2025, read through the Department of Labor's My Next Move. Checked 2026-09-05.
- How many people do public relations work and how many do journalism, and what each pays in the middle: Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupational employment and wage statistics, public relations specialists and news analysts, reporters and journalists, May 2023. Checked 2026-09-05.
- The rules an accredited program follows on class size and on credit for outside work: Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, handbook, 2024-2025. Checked 2026-09-05.
- A program that requires a second subject and real work outside the classroom: University of Iowa, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, degree requirements. Checked 2026-09-05.
Careers this major feeds