Monday, March 15, 2010

Top ten highest-paying college majors

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, these are currently the ten highest-paying college majors for new college graduates:
  1. Petroleum Engineering — $86,220
  2. Chemical Engineering — $65,142
  3. Mining & Mineral Engineering (incl. geological) — $64,552
  4. Computer Science — $61,205
  5. Computer Engineering — $60,879
  6. Electrical/Electronics & Communications Engineering — $59,074
  7. Mechanical Engineering — $58,392
  8. Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering — $57,734
  9. Aerospace/Aeronautical/Astronautical Engineering — $57,231
  10. Information Sciences & Systems — $54,038
In general, technical majors pay the most. Finance-related majors (e.g. finance, accounting, economics, business) are the second-highest-paying group of majors. Health and natural sciences come next. Liberal arts, agriculture, and education majors pay the least. A technical undergraduate degree combined with an M.B.A. pays extremely well. For more on this topic, see here.
Posted by James Tags: ,

3 comments:

  1. I've pointed this out before, and I'll do so again. The list is poor statistics, presenting a single statistic that is meaningless without the rest. Without an indication of a variance, median, and mode, it is simply impossible to tell is the average is 100 people earning exactly that amount or 1 person earning 100 times that amount with the remaining earning nothing.

    IT says nothing about the labor market, how much competition is there that is faced by each graduate. If there are 100 graduates with a degree in computer engineering and only ten jobs, that's ten people with the average salary and 90 working in some unrelated profession.

    The problem with statistics is individuals that present them without any understanding of what they mean. Rather than examine all of the statistics and reporting accurately and comprehensively, they simply grab onto a single statistic that implies what they already have chosen to understand.

    And, you will find, following the link, that the reference is another blog that does no better.

    This is the problem with bloggers blogging about the blogging of other bloggers. Full of opinions based on a single isolated fact. And, as we know, opinions are like @$$#0&%$, everyone has one and they always smell.
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  2. Anonymous said...
    "And, you will find, following the link, that the reference is another blog that does no better."

    That is 100% wrong. The first link points to the location of the original source, the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Unfortunately, the page being pointed to has been taken down.

    The second link points to another post on my blog. It is not a reference. It is a link to more info. This blog post has no links to outside blogs.
    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous said...
    "If there are 100 graduates with a degree in computer engineering and only ten jobs, that's ten people with the average salary and 90 working in some unrelated profession."

    The starting salaries listed are for new graduates in a given major regardless of whether they take a job related to their degree. So, those 90 people hypothetically working in "some unrelated profession" still count toward the average. It would be mathematically impossible to have 10 of the people earning the average and 90 earning below average.
    ReplyDelete

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