shane hummus: is a biochemistry degree worth it? jobs, salaries, & career advice

Is a biochemistry major or biochemistry degree worth it? That's what we're gonna be talking about today. But before we get into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel, we talk about college degrees, personal finance, careers, and opportunities that are gonna lead you to success. And we also go over some of the common financial traps that so many people fall for. If this sounds like something that interests you and you haven't done it already and you're new here, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. With that being said, let's jump right into it. Today, we are gonna be talking about a biochemistry degree and whether it's worth it or not. So a biochemistry degree is basically gonna be the combination of biology and chemistry. Chemistry is more of a physical science. It doesn't really focus on living objects, whereas biology does focus on that. And so biochemistry is going to be chemistry, but focused on living objects like humans, for instance, or cells. About 8,700 people graduate with a biochemistry degree per year. And you do have quite a few different career options when you graduate with this degree. Now, you guys know the drill in these videos. I'm gonna go over the most important sections when it comes to evaluating different types of degrees. The first section we're gonna be going over is going to be salary. With a biochemistry degree, you'll expect to make around $47,000 a year starting out and 95,000 in mid-career pay. That is relatively good, especially when it comes to the science-related degrees. Now, if you were to become a biochemist, you would make around $94,000 a year, but unfortunately, most biochemists have to get a doctorate. You could also just become a chemist or material scientist, and this one doesn't require a doctorate, and you can make around $78,000 a year. And there are actually a bunch of different career paths that you can go down with a biochemistry degree. It is one of the more flexible degrees when it comes to the science ones. Science degrees in general are a little bit tougher to get a job, especially your first job right after graduating college. However, biochemistry is gonna be one of the better ones. You still might have a little bit of trouble getting a job. You probably want to make sure that you plan ahead, maybe do an internship or network. Overall, if you are able to get a job, the salary score is going to be relatively good. With this one, I'm gonna rate it eight out of 10 when it comes to salary. Next, we're gonna be talking about satisfaction, and I always like to break this down into two important categories, which are meaning and then job satisfaction. Meaning is gonna be how much you think your career positively contributes to the world, whereas job satisfaction is just gonna be how much do you enjoy your job. Now, when it comes to meaning, a biochemistry degree is going to be higher than average at about 60%. That means that 60% of the people who got a biochemistry degree when they got their job, they think that it positively contributes to the world significantly. Science-related degrees do tend to have higher levels of meaning, and this one is no exception. You can see this when you compare it to art-related degrees or finance-related degrees where the meaning score tends to be relatively low. Now, if you were to become a biochemist, for instance, their meaning score is about 60%, whereas their job satisfaction score is gonna be even higher at 70%. And you see this with a lot of the other careers that you might go into when it comes to a biochemistry degree. So this degree, on average, is gonna score higher when it comes to meaning as well as job satisfaction. Now, of course, this is extremely subjective. One person might think this is awful, whereas another person might think it's a 10 out of 10. But overall, from the research that I've done, people who get science-related degrees and they actually are able to land science-related jobs do tend to be pretty satisfied and happy. For this one, I'm gonna give it a satisfaction score of eight out of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about demand. Now, demand is extremely important, especially when we're talking about science-related degrees, because a lot of the time, if you just have a bachelor's degree, you're gonna have a very hard time finding a job. Now, I will say that out of a lot of the science-related degrees, biochemistry is gonna be one of the better ones when it comes to finding a job with just a bachelor's-level degree. But it's still a science-related degree, and so, therefore, it might be very difficult for you to get a job, especially when it's your very first one out of college. So if you became a biochemist, for instance, there's about 34,000 jobs available right now. It's growing at 4%, which is faster than average, meaning over the next 10 years, there's gonna be around 1,400 jobs that pop up. If you became a chemist or material scientist, there's about 93,000 jobs available right now. It's growing at 5%, which is slightly faster than average, meaning over the next 10 years, there's gonna be around 4,300 new jobs. Now, considering the fact that there's about 8,400 new graduates every single year, that's okay, but it's honestly not great. And you see that science-related careers in general are growing at about 5%, which is slightly above average. So again, good but not great. It's nothing to scoff at, but at the same time, it's nothing to get excited about. Now, one test that I always like to do is to go to monster.com and then type in a keyword like biochemistry degree and see how many of the listings have that as a keyword. So for instance, about 3,800 of the job listings have biochemistry degree as a keyword. You can compare that to a really good degree like computer science, for instance, where there's 136,000 listings, or a really bad degree like anthropology where there's only about 800. So again, it's better than a bad degree, but it's not something amazing like computer science. So it is a science degree, and one of the big problems with science degrees, I mentioned this before, is the fact that many people think that they can graduate with a science degree with a bachelor's and they'll just be able to get a job. After all, science is the S in STEM, right? And all STEM degrees are great. The truth is, out of the STEM-related degrees, science is definitely the worst out of the four categories. A lot of the time, people will get a bachelor's degree in biology or chemistry or any number of different science-related degrees, and they will find that they're unable to get a job with just a four-year bachelor-level degree. They'll have to go back to college, get a master's, or sometimes even a doctorate. This happened to a really good friend of mine where she planned on going to medical school, and so she got a four-year biology degree. That makes sense, right? It's a pretty good prereq. She ended up not going to medical school, and she was stuck with a bachelor's degree, and she couldn't find a job. So she ended up going back to school, and she eventually got her doctorate. And I've talked to everyone before on this channel about how you want to make sure to avoid graduate school unless you know exactly what you're getting yourself into. I always recommend trying to get a degree in undergrad where you can get a job with just your bachelor-level degree. And then once you know that you can get a job, at that point, if you decide to go back to grad school, that's great. But the key thing here is that it's your decision. It's not something that you have to do. It's your choice. Overall, this one is gonna be better than a lot of the other science-related degrees, though. I'm gonna give it a demand score of seven out of 10. Next on the list, we're gonna be talking about the X factors, and this could include all kinds of different things that don't fall into the other three categories. So for instance, we're gonna talk about the skills that you learn, how easily automated it is, how easily outsourced it is. And one thing I always like to talk about is how flexible a degree is. So an example of a very flexible degree would be a business degree. You can combine business degrees with all other types of degrees, and they work really synergistically. With a business degree, you can work in just about any industry and just about any business and a bunch of different types of jobs. If you plan on being one thing, like let's say you plan on being a salesman for the rest of your life, and then later on you decide, hey, I don't really wanna do sales anymore, it would be relatively easy with a business degree to switch careers, whereas there's a lot of degrees out there where it would be much more difficult. Now, unfortunately, science-related degrees in general are not going to be the most flexible ones. However, when it comes to flexibility, out of the science-related degrees, biochemistry is gonna have one of the highest scores. Now, when it comes to the skills that you learn, you are gonna learn some analytical skills, problem solving, the scientific method, and don't get me wrong, these things are going to be transferable to other types of careers. However, ZipRecruiter created a skills index where they ranked how valuable skills are on the open market. So how much are companies willing to pay people who have various types of skills? And the skill of biochemistry came in at an index score of about 42, which is very average. In fact, it might even be a little bit below average. So biochemistry as a skill is not ranked very high. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have value, it's just on the open market what companies are willing to pay people for different types of skills. It's not great. Now, in terms of difficulty, biochemistry on this list by thetab.com, which I don't think is very accurate, it comes in as one of the top 10 most difficult degrees. I think realistically, it's probably more like one of the top 25 most difficult degrees, maybe top 30, but it definitely is going to be one of the more difficult ones. It's not a walk in the park. Now, another thing I like to talk about, just because I think the perception here is so far off, the perception is just so far off from the reality, is the fact that science-related degrees do tend to be regretted. Biological and physical sciences tend to be the second most regretted type of degree out of all of them. About 35% of people regret getting this degree, and the reason for that is because it's hard to find a job without an advanced degree or a license. Now, I think a lot of this has to do with the perception that all STEM-related degrees are just golden. You know, you get a STEM-related degree and you're gonna be good to go. That's not necessarily true, especially when it comes to these science degrees. You're gonna wanna do other stuff in order to learn skills that people are gonna wanna hire you for. So you're gonna be networking, learning extra skills. It's probably a good idea to also do an internship. And most importantly, you need to make sure to look ahead, have a really good plan, know what your goal is, and then reverse engineer it and figure out what steps you need to take in order to get to it. And that almost always involves figuring out what type of career you're going for and then contacting people who are currently doing that career themselves. I talk about this stuff quite a bit in other videos, so I don't wanna go over it too much in this one, but I think you get the idea. Now, one thing here is that science-related degrees do tend to earn more over a lifetime than your average degree. Your average degree will earn around $2.4 million over a lifetime, whereas a science grad will earn around 2.6 million. So it's nice to know that science degrees are above average, although not by very much. Overall, when it comes to X-Factors, I think this one is gonna be a little bit better than some of the other science-related degrees, but it's still not amazing compared to all degrees. I'm gonna give this one a seven out of 10. So the pros here, biochemistry degree does pay pretty well if you're able to get a job. And again, if you're able to get a job, you're probably going to be relatively satisfied. On top of that, when compared to other science-related degrees, you're gonna have a much better chance of getting a job with just a bachelor's. However, the cons here, it's still a science degree, so if you don't do your research, there's a very good chance that you'll have to go back to school in order to get a master's or a doctorate to get a job. In terms of the demand, it's relatively average, and it's not gonna be a very flexible degree. If you decide to change your career, there's not gonna be that many options for you. Also, depending on where you live, there's a very good chance that you'll likely have to move somewhere in order to get your first job. Once you get your first few years in, it's gonna be much easier for you to find a better job somewhere else, maybe somewhere that's closer to your family, for instance. But getting those first few years is very important, and so you'll likely have to move somewhere. Overall, I'm gonna give this one a 7.5 out of 10. That's relatively good. As long as you do your research and you plan it out, this can be a great one. And again, this is always extremely subjective. For one person, it could be a one out of 10, and for another person, it could be a 10 out of 10. I always recommend that you guys do your research, and watching my videos is great, but it's a good idea for you to research on your own. Another thing that might help you is if you checked out my college degree ranker down below in the description. It is a work in progress. I'm basically making it better and better every few months, and my plan is to make it the most thorough and accurate college degree ranker that exists. If you haven't done it already, go ahead, gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below, any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera, share the video, and whatever you do, don't click out. Check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.