[m00n]

I was thinking along these lines, too. But the problem with job satisfaction is: Do you rely on self-reported job satisfaction or objective quantitities like absenteeism or turnover?

Both are hard to make comparable between different fields: In some (think med, law etc) the cost of education will prohibit changing careers, regardless of if you make millions as patent lawyer or heart surgeon (assuming that the latter adds more "value to society"). So I think it is hard to come up with a consistent objective measure of satisfaction. On the other hand, if you poll people, you might find, that fine arts majors were very happy with their college life, but actually work in a different field to pay rent (I happen to know some music majors).

The problem with the societal benefit definition is: It very much depends on your own system of beliefs. Is an education in business and employing 5 people, more or less valuable than a job as a veterinary? Since most of the undergrad majors also have a variety of possible jobs they could lead into, this is even harder to quantify.

So maybe just do away with rankings :-)

[jamesrcole]

Just because something is difficult to quantify doesn't meant it doesn't exist or is unimportant.