Sin City Scholars: Nevada's #1 College Major Is Exactly What You Think It Is
If you’ve driven down the I-15 lately, you already know. Sandwiched between ads for all-you-can-eat buffets and “GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS,” roughly nine out of every ten billboards in Las Vegas is for a personal injury attorney. “HURT IN AN ACCIDENT? ONE CALL, THAT’S ALL.” It’s basically our state flower at this point.
by Staci Layne Wilson
So it should surprise absolutely no one that a new study by Studocu has confirmed what every Las Vegas local has long suspected: criminal justice is the most Googled college major in Nevada, racking up the most monthly searches and edging out computer science by a nail-biting four searches.
Four. The margin is four.
Nevada is a state where the casinos have their own courts, the downtown area inspired a Scorsese film, and you can legally gamble away your rent money at 3 a.m. while a man in a sequined vest plays “Viva Las Vegas” six feet away. Of course we’re interested in law enforcement, legal processes, and criminal procedure. We live inside a real-time case study.
What makes this even more delightful is that Studocu’s own write-up accidentally swapped the descriptions for Criminal Justice and Psychology, giving CJ the psychology write-up (developmental behavior! cognitive processes!) and handing Psychology the law enforcement description. In a story about Nevada’s love of criminal justice, the researchers themselves committed an academic crime. Poetic. Truly.
Coming in at #2 is Computer Science, because if you’re not locking people up in this state, you’re building the app that helps them hide their assets. Psychology lands at #3, which tracks, understanding why someone thinks they can beat the house is a full-time academic discipline out here.
Business Administration and Nursing round out the list, representing the two other pillars of Vegas life: hustling and patching people up afterward.
A Studocu spokesperson offered the measured observation that “students often explore majors that provide clear academic structures and broad opportunities”, which is a very polite way of saying that kids here grow up watching lawyers get rich and think, yeah, I could do that.
Welcome to Nevada, where the odds are always interesting, and somebody’s always getting sued
