What Can You Do With a Math Degree? | Education - WTOP

What Can You Do With a Math Degree? originally appeared on usnews.com

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An understanding of how to work with numbers is valuable in fields ranging from government to business to the tech sector, and that is one reason why a math degree is a marketable credential by WTOP

Photo: courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Workers with impressive quantitative abilities are attractive to employers in general, so they aren’t automatically destined to become high school math teachers or college math professors. Although an education career is one way to apply a math degree, there are many math-related professional endeavors outside academia.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage among U.S. mathematicians in May 2019 was $105,030. The BLS predicts that the number of employed mathematicians will be 26% higher in 2028 than it was in 2018: a job growth forecast that the bureau characterizes as “much faster” than the norm among all occupations combined, which is only 5%.
“I would say that you can do just about anything with a math degree,” says Jason Howell, director of undergraduate studies in mathematical sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh...

Experts say a math degree is helpful for obtaining the following types of jobs. However, it should be noted that there are other occupations that math grads may pursue besides these: 

— Actuary.
— Algorithmic engineer.
— College or university math professor.
— Data scientist.
— Entrepreneur.
— High school math teacher.
— Investment banking analyst.
— Management consultant.
— Mathematician.
— Operations research analyst.
— Process engineer.
— Project manager.
— Quality assurance manager.
— Software developer.
— Statistician.

Noah Giansiracusa, an assistant professor of mathematics at Bentley University in Massachusetts, says that a math degree has long been “quite versatile and marketable.”  
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Source: WTOP