Learn to Speak and Understand Spanish
Compared to Physics, Engineering, Biology, and Math is Spanish still a good major to specialize in today? Do you get respect and earn good money? Are there lots of job opportunities? Is it considered taking the easy way out of hard majors?
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Most people don’t get jobs in their majors. If you end up working a typical job in, say, sales, it won’t matter if you majored in physics or Spanish (though the Spanish might come in handy more often). It will just matter that you have a degree, got some marketable skills from that degree, and maybe some relevant work experience to go with it. That’s not to say that it’s easy to get any job with any degree, and some majors do offer more high-paying job opportunities than others, but most physics majors don’t become physicists either.
If you know what you want to do, plan your major (/minor) accordingly. Otherwise, take something you enjoy and will do well in and just look for opportunities along the way to build your resume as you narrow it down. You may find that you want to take a pre-med or pre-law track or get teacher certification in addition to your major. Or you might decide you want to work for a certain kind of industry or organization and could get experience by doing summer internships.
No degree guarantees you respect or good money. You have to make your degree work for you. Your career center at your college might be able to help you plan for that. Spanish is not an "easy way out," but it’s not as clear-cut as an engineering degree to be an engineer; it’s up to you to figure out how knowing Spanish (and the reading and writing skills, cultural awareness, etc. that go with that major) will make you a better candidate for the job you want and what else you can do to increase your prospects.
A friend of mine is native Spanish-speaking. She got a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a minor in Business. (The truth is, Spanish was more or less the only Major she could reasonably expect to complete). She got several job offers working for banks in California in branches which cater to the new Spanish-speaking near-majority.
This particular combination of Spanish+Business turns out to be not bad — due to social and economic circumstances (It probably wouldn’t be very valuable in North Dakota…).
On most charts of pay for recent graduates, it’s among the lowest down with music, theater, and early education. It is nowhere near the levels of Engineering and Math – which are at the top.
The problem is that there aren’t a lot of jobs for "Spanishers" – you need some other skills too. The other problem is that there is a growing population of bilingual native Spanish speakers in the US. A degree major does not create native fluency and the native fluency has value to some employers.
Now, if you add that Spanish major to a complimentary major such as education, business, politics, or communication (tech writing) then there are some good opportunities out there. You just need to have some marketable skill that also has a global/bilingual demand. Even work as a translator tends to insist on a degree in the social science part of communication so that you also get the contextual differences.
Example: I recently hired a tax accountant. I needed one who could prepare taxes for non-English speaking customers. I didn’t want someone with a degree in Spanish. I hired someone with a degree in accounting that happens to speak fluent Spanish. He doesn’t even have a US degree and we don’t care because the IRS publishes manuals in Spanish. I don’t even care if he speaks English very well (he doesn’t) as long as we can communicate.