SDSU's top 10 degrees among 2024 graduates

Great American self-help author Robert Collier described success as “the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” If anyone knows that to be true, it’s a college graduate.

Nearly 12,000 San Diego State University students will realize that sum this week during one of several commencement ceremonies. With the turn of a tassel, and the fling of a hat, they’ll be ready to embark on their next journey, eventually adding themselves to the ranks of health care workers, teachers, entrepreneurs, law enforcement agents and other professions worldwide.

Each year around commencement time, SDSU NewsCenter compiles a list of the most popular degrees among the newest batch of lifelong Aztecs. Here are the top 10 for 2024:

10. Business Administration - Accounting
This year, 198 students were added to the list of Charles W. Lamden School of Accountancy graduates. Whether they choose public accounting or accounting positions leading to financial management in business or industry, graduates are well prepared for the real world. The School of Accountancy, located within the Fowler College of Business, enjoys a national reputation for its innovations in accounting, auditing, and taxation.

9. Liberal Studies - Elementary Education
These 201 students earned a degree that focuses on inquiry-based education which includes hands-on instruction with problem-based learning and issues-centered curriculum, and emphasized reflection during the teaching process. In addition, the coursework links theory and classroom practice to assist teachers in learning how to teach with an inquiry-based focus in elementary and secondary classrooms.

8. Business Administration - Management
Managers are responsible for achieving organizational objectives by coordinating money, materials, machines, and most important of all, the efforts of people. There are 211 new Aztecs who can claim readiness for these tasks after earning this degree offered by the Fowler College of Business.

7. Computer Science
These 244 students learned essential skills in computer science, including how to store and retrieve information and how to use and design programming languages. Required coursework also covers the hardware systems that interpret such languages and the theoretical principles in data structures and architecture that form the foundations of computing. The degree offers a variety of specialized electives in areas such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, robotics, graphics, systems programming, simulation, and computer networks.

6. Kinesiology - Pre-physical therapy
With this degree now in hand, 299 Aztecs meet the academic requirements necessary for entry to postgraduate education for rehabilitative professions such as physical therapy, chiropractic care, occupational therapy, physician assistant, and podiatry.

5. Business Administration - Finance
Within our economic system, finance is concerned with capital, which is money or property owned or used in business. An even 300 finance majors, learning through the Fowler College of Business, studied both the sources and the uses of capital, with curriculum revolving around the valuation process in a free market system.

4. Business Administration - General Business
Positions available to the 334 newest degree holders in this Fowler College of Business discipline are those that require a broad, overarching understanding of the business function, rather than a specialized knowledge within a particular business sub-discipline. Examples are in retailing, sales, and other service industries.

3. Business Administration - Marketing
The 336 newest marketing degree holders studied how products and services are developed, priced, promoted, distributed and sold. The process requires an understanding of buyer and seller behavior within the context of the overall market environment. Added emphasis in this Fowler College of Business discipline is given to the important area of global markets with their own special challenges and opportunities. Marketing is an essential part of every business. Not-for-profit organizations also have to market their products/services, and the marketing discipline addresses the special needs of such organizations.

2. Criminal Justice
The criminal justice major is designed to encourage thoughtful exploration of the ways that criminal justice systems provide justice, or fail to do so. These 473 graduates, studying under the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts, learned the criminal justice system from a social justice policy perspective, taking into account the impact of the criminal justice system on individuals, groups, and organizations in society.

1. Psychology
This major helped 507 students discover the intricacies of human behavior, and learn how human beings develop, learn, think and feel. The skills gained will open up a variety of career opportunities.