How high is the “return on investment” for a gender studies diploma from UF? And how does it stack up against a finance degree?
That’s what the UF Board of Governors, the political appointees who oversee the state university system, want to know by the end of March.
The board is currently soliciting bids for a system-wide pilot study on the return on investment for degrees from five academic programs: finance, nursing, civil engineering, computer science and women’s and gender studies.
At UF, computer science is the only program from the board’s list not slated for review.
The pilot study will weigh the programs’ operational costs including faculty and staff salaries.
The board isn’t required to commission the study under any state law, and it’s unclear how much the study will cost taxpayers or how its findings could factor into future funding decisions for the selected programs.
A Board of Governors spokesperson wrote in an email statement that if the pilot study’s findings are “worthwhile,” then the board will move forward with a more comprehensive program review across the university system.
Status and concerns for women’s studies
Some Democratic lawmakers and non-UF professors are questioning why the state is putting women’s and gender studies under the microscope alongside four politically palatable, high-value majors.
“The very lopsided selection of the programs that they're studying raises questions about their goals and intents,” said Amy Reid, the former director of New College of Florida’s now-dissolved gender studies program. “It's hard to see the benefit of doing the comparative analysis of pistachios and pineapples.”
Florida is one of an increasing number of states that have sought to axe gender studies programs. Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers have argued the programs don't prepare students for the workforce and are a waste of taxpayer dollars.
“You’re going to have a truck driver pay for someone’s degree in gender studies. No, that doesn’t make sense,” DeSantis said at a 2023 rally in Iowa.
But the Florida Legislature has stopped short of banning gender studies and other subjects outright because doing so is legally tricky. A 2023 bill that would have removed any programs teaching critical race theory, gender studies or intersectionality from state universities’ offerings was ultimately tabled after State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-42) and other lawmakers brought up First Amendment concerns.
“This has been a slow burn,” said Eskamani, who studied political science at the University of Central Florida. “Before you know it, you blink and the programs are gone.”
Eskamani said she suspects that the state will use the study to justify pulling funding during the upcoming legislative session. “They were unable to strip the programs based on content,” she said. “Now, they’re attempting to defund the programs.”
Eskamani also raised concerns about the potential cost of the study. The Board of Governors was approved by the state legislature for less than $750,000 in appropriations to pay for a system-wide review that included more programs, but the request was nixed in favor of the smaller-scale pilot study.
The Board of Governors spokesperson didn’t answer a question about how much the board intends to spend on the pilot study.
“It’s a huge waste of money,” Eskamani said, adding that it would be better spent on professors’ salaries, scholarships and campus infrastructure.
Why study return on investment?
Michael Itzkowitz, a UF sociology alum and former U.S. Department of Education official, said it’s uncommon for states to commission return on investment studies and that they are typically performed on a national scale.
Itzkowitz, while in the U.S. DOE, founded the College Scorecard, an online tool that tracks post-graduation salaries and student debt for different majors across universities nationwide. He said the most common way to calculate the return on investment for certain programs is by comparing out-of-pocket costs against how much students would earn with and without a degree.
Itzkowitz said graduates of UF’s women’s and gender studies program generally fare well in the workforce and are able to pay off student debt on par with other majors, though starting salaries for gender studies graduates tend to be lower than other majors.
“Look, if you’re a sociology major like I am, you are not going to earn as much as a computer scientist,” Itzkowitz said. “Those are just the facts. Any findings in this study will not illuminate anything more than we already know.”
UF students who earned bachelor’s degrees in ethnic, cultural minority, gender and group studies in 2019 or 2020 earned an average $26,000 salary the first year following their graduation, according to DOE data.
Graduates gave about 11% of their salary to loan payments each month during that period, making their debt-to-earnings ratio the second-worst among UF subject areas for that cohort. Only dance majors fared worse at 12% per month.
By contrast, graduates from the other four majors involved in the study — engineering, finance, nursing and computer science — had debt-to-income ratios between about 2% and 3% one year after graduation.
Five years after graduation, UF ethnic and gender studies students who earned their degrees in 2014 and 2015 were making an average salary of over $52,000 annually. However, monthly loan information for this cohort is not available, so the change in their debt-to-income ratio and how it compares to other majors over time is unclear.
The comparison of typically higher salary earning programs with a typically lower salary earning program has led Itzkowitz to speculate whether the study is politically motivated or not.
“It seems as if there are some politics behind this and they're looking to find that one major's graduates don't earn as much as another,” Itzkowitz said.
What’s next for UF?
The Board of Governors is expected to hire a contractor to perform the study by the end of January, and is asking for a final report by the end of March, according to the board’s request for proposal.
UF spokesperson Steve Orlando referred The Alligator to the Board of Governors for comment in response to an emailed list of questions about how the study could impact the programs selected for study.
Jillian Hernandez, an associate professor in UF’s department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, wrote in an email she expects the study to reveal a healthy return on investment for prospective gender studies students. Gender studies degrees give students a “leg-up” in the workforce, Hernandez wrote, and graduates from her department typically land well-paid jobs across fields like health and education.
“I am confident that the state will find that university faculty and administrators have been good stewards of the state’s resources via Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies education,” Hernandez wrote.
Contact Sofia Meyers at smeyers@alligator.org. Follow her on X @SofiaMeyer84496
Zoey Thomas contributed to this report.
