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September 19, 2026 · RezScore

The complete list of college majors, by field (2026)

Every college major, grouped by field and built on the federal program taxonomy, with links to how common each one is and where it tends to lead.

Most pages about college majors give you a ranking, a top ten, or somebody’s opinion about which degree is worth it. This one is just the list.

It is built on the federal program taxonomy that colleges already use to classify what they teach, grouped into fields, with the common majors under each field. Skim the jump list, open the field you care about, and read down. Names vary by school, so treat each entry as a family of programs rather than a catalog line you can copy.

Two companion pages do the other jobs. If you want majors sorted by how common they actually are, with pay and trend data attached, read our top 100 college majors ranked for 2026. If you want to know where a major tends to lead after graduation, read college majors and careers. This page stays out of both arguments. It just lists what exists.

Where a major also appears in our 2026 ranking, the bullet says so and links across.

Jump to a field

Agriculture, animal, plant, and veterinary sciences · Architecture and related services · Area, ethnic, cultural, and gender studies · Biological and biomedical sciences · Business, management, and marketing · Communication and journalism · Communications technologies · Computer and information sciences · Education · Engineering · Engineering technologies · English language and literature · Family and consumer sciences · Foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics · Health professions · History · Homeland security, law enforcement, and protective services · Legal professions and studies · Liberal arts, general studies, and humanities · Library and information science · Mathematics and statistics · Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies · Natural resources and conservation · Parks, recreation, fitness, and kinesiology · Philosophy and religious studies · Physical sciences · Psychology · Public administration and social services · Social sciences · Theology and religious vocations · Transportation and aviation · Visual and performing arts

Agriculture, animal, plant, and veterinary sciences

Food, land, and animals, plus the business and laboratory science around them. Land grant universities carry most of these programs, and many of them are closer to applied biology than to farming.

  • Agricultural Business and Management
  • Agricultural Mechanization
  • Agriculture (#71 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Animal Sciences
  • Food Science and Technology
  • Horticulture
  • International Agriculture
  • Plant Sciences
  • Soil Sciences
  • Veterinary Medicine (a professional degree taken after a bachelor’s)

Designing buildings, interiors, landscapes, and the cities around them. Licensure in architecture runs through an accredited degree, so the program you pick matters more here than in most fields.

  • Architectural History and Criticism
  • Architectural Sciences and Technology
  • Architecture (#64 in our 2026 ranking)
  • City, Community, and Regional Planning
  • Environmental Design
  • Interior Architecture
  • Landscape Architecture
  • Real Estate Development

Area, ethnic, cultural, and gender studies

Interdisciplinary programs organized around a place, a people, or a social category rather than a single academic method. Most combine history, language, politics, and literature.

  • African Studies
  • African American and Black Studies
  • American Indian and Native American Studies
  • American Studies
  • Asian American Studies
  • Asian Studies
  • Disability Studies
  • East Asian Studies
  • Ethnic Studies
  • European Studies
  • Folklore Studies
  • Latin American and Caribbean Studies
  • Near and Middle Eastern Studies
  • Russian and East European Studies
  • Women’s and Gender Studies

Biological and biomedical sciences

Living systems, from molecules to ecosystems. This field feeds medical school, research, biotechnology, and a large share of the health professions.

Business, management, and marketing

The largest field in American higher education, and the one with the most overlapping names. Several of these titles describe the same coursework at different schools.

Communication and journalism

How messages get made, carried, and received. The practical tracks (reporting, public relations, advertising) sit alongside theory tracks about media and rhetoric.

Communications technologies

Production and craft rather than theory. Much of this field is taught at the certificate and associate level, but animation and graphic communications are common bachelor’s majors.

  • Animation and Visual Effects
  • Audio and Recording Arts
  • Graphic Communications
  • Photographic and Film Technology
  • Printing Management
  • Radio and Television Broadcasting Technology

Computer and information sciences

The top of our ranking. Computer Science graduates most often land in software developer roles, and the neighboring titles below split along how much math, hardware, or business each one includes.

Education

Teaching, plus the administration and design work around it. Most states license teachers by level and subject, so the major names here are unusually specific.

  • Adult and Continuing Education
  • Art Teacher Education
  • Bilingual and Multicultural Education
  • Curriculum and Instruction
  • Early Childhood Education (#89 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Education (#26 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Educational Administration
  • Elementary Education
  • English and Language Arts Teacher Education
  • Foreign Language Teacher Education
  • Mathematics Teacher Education
  • Music Teacher Education
  • Physical Education and Coaching
  • Science Teacher Education
  • Secondary Education
  • Special Education
  • Teaching English as a Second Language

Engineering

The widest set of named programs of any field, because engineering splits by the physical system you work on. Accreditation matters, and several of these titles appear high in our ranking.

Engineering technologies

Applied, hands on versions of the engineering fields above. The degree is usually a Bachelor of Science in a named technology, and the work sits closer to build and test than to design.

  • Civil and Construction Engineering Technology
  • Computer Engineering Technology
  • Drafting and Design Technology
  • Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technology
  • Energy Systems Technology
  • Engineering and Industrial Management
  • Engineering Technology
  • Manufacturing Engineering Technology
  • Nanotechnology
  • Packaging Science
  • Surveying Technology
  • Welding Engineering Technology

English language and literature

Reading closely and writing clearly, taught through literary history. Writing tracks have grown into separate majors at many schools.

  • American Literature
  • Children’s and Adolescent Literature
  • Creative Writing
  • English (#20 in our 2026 ranking)
  • English Literature
  • Literature
  • Professional and Technical Writing
  • Rhetoric and Composition

Family and consumer sciences

Households, food, clothing, and human development, studied as applied social science. Nutrition and child development are the largest tracks.

  • Apparel and Textiles
  • Child Development
  • Family and Community Services
  • Family and Consumer Sciences
  • Foods, Nutrition, and Wellness Studies
  • Foodservice Systems Management
  • Housing and Human Environments
  • Human Development and Family Studies
  • Human Nutrition

Foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics

Languages studied with their literatures, plus linguistics, which studies how language works rather than any one language. Most schools list each language as its own major.

  • American Sign Language
  • Arabic Language and Literature
  • Chinese Language and Literature
  • Classics and Classical Languages
  • Comparative Literature
  • French Language and Literature
  • German Language and Literature
  • Italian Language and Literature
  • Japanese Language and Literature
  • Korean Language and Literature
  • Language Interpretation and Translation
  • Linguistics
  • Portuguese Language and Literature
  • Russian Language and Literature
  • Spanish Language and Literature

Health professions

The biggest field after business, and the most heavily licensed. Several entries here are graduate or professional degrees that you enter after a bachelor’s, which is noted where it applies.

  • Athletic Training
  • Clinical Laboratory Science
  • Communication Disorders and Speech Language Pathology
  • Dental Hygiene
  • Dentistry (a professional degree taken after a bachelor’s)
  • Dietetics and Clinical Nutrition
  • Health Sciences
  • Healthcare Administration (#79 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Health Information Management
  • Medicine (a professional degree taken after a bachelor’s)
  • Nursing (#29 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Occupational Therapy
  • Pharmacy (#92 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Physical Therapy
  • Physician Assistant Studies
  • Public Health (#45 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Radiologic Technology
  • Respiratory Therapy

History

Its own field in the federal taxonomy, separate from the social sciences, and usually taught by period and region.

  • American History
  • Ancient and Classical History
  • European History
  • History (#41 in our 2026 ranking)
  • History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
  • Public History and Archives

Homeland security, law enforcement, and protective services

Policing, corrections, emergency management, and the analysis work behind them. Criminal Justice is the anchor major and sits inside the top half of our ranking.

  • Corrections and Criminal Justice Administration
  • Crisis and Emergency Management
  • Criminal Justice (#37 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Cyber Forensics
  • Fire Science and Fire Services Administration
  • Forensic Science and Technology
  • Homeland Security
  • Intelligence Analysis
  • Security and Loss Prevention

Law itself is a graduate degree in the United States, so the undergraduate side of this field is support work and pre law study.

Liberal arts, general studies, and humanities

Broad programs with no single disciplinary home. Useful for transfer students and for people who want breadth on purpose, and common at community colleges.

  • General Studies
  • Humanities
  • Liberal Arts and Sciences

Library and information science

Organizing information and the institutions that keep it. The professional degree is usually a master’s, but bachelor’s programs exist.

  • Archives and Archival Administration
  • Children and Youth Library Services
  • Library and Information Science

Mathematics and statistics

Proof, modeling, and measurement. Applied tracks have grown fastest, and statistics has partly been absorbed into data science programs.

Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies

Programs built by combining two or more fields. This is where the federal taxonomy puts data science, cognitive science, and most of the named hybrids.

  • Behavioral Sciences
  • Biopsychology
  • Climate Science
  • Cognitive Science
  • Data Analytics (#40 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Data Science (#34 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Gerontology
  • Historic Preservation and Conservation
  • Human Biology
  • Human Computer Interaction
  • International and Globalization Studies
  • Interdisciplinary Studies (#100 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Marine Sciences
  • Mathematical Economics
  • Museum Studies
  • Neuroscience and Behavior
  • Nutrition Sciences
  • Peace and Conflict Studies
  • Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
  • Science, Technology, and Society
  • Sustainability Studies

Natural resources and conservation

Land, water, forests, and wildlife, studied as systems to be managed. Environmental Science sits here rather than in the physical sciences.

  • Environmental Science (#80 in our 2026 ranking)
  • Environmental Studies
  • Fisheries Sciences and Management
  • Forestry
  • Land Use Planning and Management
  • Natural Resources Conservation
  • Water and Marine Resources Management
  • Wildlife and Wildlands Management

Parks, recreation, fitness, and kinesiology

The science and management of physical activity. Exercise Science is a common route into physical therapy and other clinical graduate programs.

  • Exercise Science and Kinesiology
  • Outdoor Education
  • Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Facilities Management
  • Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Studies
  • Sport and Fitness Administration
  • Sports Studies

Philosophy and religious studies

Arguments about knowledge, ethics, and belief, studied academically rather than devotionally.

Physical sciences

Matter, energy, and the planet. These are the classic laboratory majors, and most research careers in them expect a graduate degree.

Psychology

Its own field, separate from both biology and the social sciences. The undergraduate major is general; the named specialties below are mostly graduate work.

  • Clinical Psychology
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Counseling Psychology
  • Developmental and Child Psychology
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Forensic Psychology
  • Industrial and Organizational Psychology
  • Psychology (#17 in our 2026 ranking)
  • School Psychology
  • Social Psychology

Public administration and social services

Running public institutions and delivering services through them. Social Work has its own licensure path and its own accredited degree.

Social sciences

How people behave in groups, studied with data and theory. Economics and Political Science are the two largest majors here.

Theology and religious vocations

Training for ministry and religious scholarship, mostly at seminaries and religiously affiliated colleges.

  • Biblical Studies
  • Pastoral Counseling
  • Religious Education
  • Religious Music and Worship
  • Theological and Ministerial Studies

Transportation and aviation

Most of this field is commercial licensing rather than degree work. The bachelor’s level is aviation.

  • Air Traffic Control
  • Aviation Management and Operations
  • Aviation Science
  • Professional Pilot and Flight Crew

Visual and performing arts

Making and studying art, music, theatre, film, and design. Design programs are the largest part of this field by enrollment, and several of them appear in our ranking.

How to read this list

The backbone is the Classification of Instructional Programs, the taxonomy the U.S. Department of Education uses to code what every American college teaches. The 2020 edition is the current one. Its top level is a set of two-digit series, which are the fields above, and each series contains four-digit and six-digit programs, which are the majors above. Fields are alphabetical here rather than in code order, and majors are alphabetical within each field.

We did not list every code. The taxonomy includes series that are not college majors in any ordinary sense: reserved series with no content, medical residency and fellowship series that come after a professional degree, high school credentials, basic skills and remedial instruction, citizenship and personal improvement courses, and professional military education. We also left out the trades series (construction, mechanic and repair, precision production, science technologies) because they are almost entirely certificate and associate training rather than bachelor’s degrees. Where a field is mostly sub-baccalaureate but contains real bachelor’s programs, we kept the field and listed only those programs. Aviation and engineering technology are the two clearest cases.

Names vary. The taxonomy says Registered Nursing and your school says Nursing. It says Sports, Kinesiology, and Physical Education and your school says Exercise Science. Where the official title is not what anyone actually calls the major, we used the common name and kept the meaning. Your registrar’s catalog is the authority for your school, not this page or the federal list.

The ranking badges come from our own 2026 analysis of what majors people put on their resumes, which is a different question from what colleges award. A major can be common in the taxonomy and rare on a resume, or the reverse. Popularity, pay, and trend for each ranked major live in the ranking itself.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between a major, a degree, and a concentration?

The degree is the credential: a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Science, a Bachelor of Fine Arts. The major is the subject you concentrated in to earn it. A concentration or track is a named path inside a major, so Finance inside a Business Administration major. Minors are smaller course clusters that appear on the transcript but do not define the degree. On paper, the degree and the major matter most. The concentration is worth naming only when it is the reason you are qualified.

Can you double major, or add a minor?

At most schools, yes. A double major means completing the requirements of two majors under one degree, which usually works best when the two share general education and prerequisite courses. A dual degree means two separate degrees, often from two colleges within the same university, and takes longer. A minor is the cheapest option in credits and the weakest signal to an employer, which is fine when the point is your own interest rather than the resume.

Can you change your major?

Most students can, and many do. The cost is measured in credits that no longer count toward the new requirements, which is why changing early is cheap and changing late is not. Competitive majors (nursing, engineering, some business programs) may require a separate application, a minimum grade point average, or a specific sequence of prerequisites, so check the requirements before you count on the switch.

Where does your major go on a resume?

In the education section, as part of the degree line: the degree, the major, the school, and the graduation year. Do not spread it around. The exception is early career, when your coursework, labs, and projects are the strongest evidence you have. In that case the major stays in education, and the specific work moves into a projects or relevant coursework section where it can be read as experience rather than as a label. If you are not sure how your education section reads, put the document through our free resume grader and look at the Presentation score.

Why is my major not on this list?

Probably because your school named it something else, or because it sits one level below what we listed. The taxonomy has thousands of six-digit codes, and printing all of them would make this page unusable. If you cannot find yours, look for the field it belongs to and read the closest entry. If it is genuinely new, it may not be coded yet. The 2020 edition is a snapshot, and colleges invent programs faster than the classification updates.

Sources

  • U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Classification of Instructional Programs, 2020 edition. Series and program titles were taken from the CIP 2020 browse listing at nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode, retrieved September 19, 2026.
  • RezScore, top 100 college majors ranked for 2026, for the ranking badges.

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