How the Top 25 College Majors Have Shifted: Student Choice’s 2026 Update

Student Choice has released the 206 updated version of its ongoing study tracking how America’s most popular college majors have changed over time. The analysis drew data from 105,623 student loan applications, using them as a proxy for where students are placing their bets on their future. The idea is that a student’s choice of major reveals more than their individual preferences. They can reflect labor shortages, salary expectations, emerging technologies, and shifting cultural attitudes about which degrees are most valuable. The team also supplied a graph comparing today’s top majors with those from four and eight years ago.

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There has been a lot of disruption in recent years, but business majors have held steady. Business has been the leading major commanding between 11.45% and 12.81% of applications in 2017 and 2023. But that dominance has wobbled. In 2025, only 5.27% of applications were for a business major, but that percentage spiked back up in 2026 to 11.94%, still making it the most popular major.

Healthcare was consistently a top-two major for years, peaking in 2023 at 10.87% of applications. Now, nursing has tumbled to just 1.71% of applications in 2026. Health sciences replaced it to turn 9.81% with allied health sciences, public health, physical therapy, physician assistant studies, dentistry, and pharmacy, all landing in the top 25 of most popular majors.

The biggest growth seen in the study is in engineering and aviation. Engineering climbed from 3.91% to 7.37% in 2026. A 3.46-point gain is one of the biggest increases in this dataset. Aviation didn’t crack the top 25 of majors until 2025, when it had explosive growth, then settled into fourth place in 2026 at 5.88%. The surge in aviation maintenance rankings points to broader interest in the field, likely inspired by well-documented pilot shortages. When there’s a need, hungry young students will step up to fill it.

Psychology enjoyed modest and steady growth, inching from 4.99% in 2017 to 5.59% in 2026. Computer science took a surprising fall from a rising 3.61% to only .24% in 2026, ranking dead last in the top 25. Student Choice believes this could be due to some reporting category changes in 2025, but also speaks to the volatility of the tech job market.

Liberal arts and education lost ground, with education sliding from 5.99% of applications in 2017 to 3.70% in 2026. This decline is linked to teaching wages failing to keep up with other fields. Communications, English, and History all dropped off the top 25 entirely, yet Fine Arts bucked the trend, doubling in popularity from 1.35% to 2.25%, cracking the top ten most popular majors.

Overall, students are becoming more specialized and career-focused, drawn to healthcare, engineering, and aviation, while retreating from generalist majors and degrees that were once safe bets. The team at Student Choice cites finances as one of the biggest concerns central to a student’s decision on what major they choose