The College Majors with the Highest Starting Salaries

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panda

panda

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2015/07/02/the-college-majors-with-the-highest-starting-salaries/?utm_campaign=fbboost&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social#15a54c217130

1 Computer Science $66,800
2 Engineering $65,000
3 Mathematics and Statistics $60,300
4 Economics $58,600
5 Finance $58,000
6 Accounting $52,900
7 Nursing $50,600
8 Business $49,900
9 Health Care $48,300
10 Architecture and Planning $47,400
11 Biological Sciences $47,200
12 Law $45,800
13 Marketing $44,500
14 Physical Sciences $44,200
15 Political Science $43,200
16 Education $43,100
17 Psychology and Counseling $41,600
18 Arts $41,500
19 Graphic Design $40,700
20 History $40,300
21 English $39,600
22 Social Services $34,700
 
I thought those Finance jobs were the 6 figure out of college jobs?

Law only $45k? Hmm.

Not sure if you can hire any software developers for $67k, they all want so much more.
 
You can clearly see from an investment standpoint (Tuition ROI for your children), engineering, computer science, and business majors make the most money out of college. It is much better to be an engineering major at UCLA or a finance major at Haas (Berkeley), than to be a History or English major at Harvard.

I am assuming that pre-Law is only $45k.
 
There are large variations with each major, depending on the job role and right time/place.

About 20 years ago, I only had an AA in Business Information Systems from Fullerton College, but was able to charge (agency fee) $40/hr as a contractor at Capital Group and Southern California Gas Company, simply because I had some experience and training with IBM OS/2.

20 years later (present day), I now have 20+ years of work experience and Master's Degree, but last year I accepted a job position with base pay close to $40/hr.  Obviously my skills today are not worth 6 figure paycheck in the IT field, but I'm just happy that my job is still here.

In the Y2K and internet bubble era, COBOL programmers were paid 6 figures and "web developers" who hand coded HTML were treated like royalty.  That party lasted couple of years.

In the 2000's, if you were a six-sigma trainer you could get paid a bucket of money to fly to Asia and do training seminars.

In the 2010's when Agile was in vogue and you had experience as Product Owner or Scrum Master (or scrum methodology trainer), you could ask for 6 figure salaries.

Pharmacy school used to be a sure bet to a high paying job, but these days you'd have to accept BFE work location because places like Irvine already have a huge wait list.

There's another thread about "cash flow" rental income, where folks commented that the posts were mostly negative.  Yes, there are many negative things like, having to pay a bucket of money for someone to install "removable bird spikes" because pigeons decided to make your rental property's roof their home.  But having cash flow from your RE investments mean that you're not totally dependent on your paycheck in a constantly changing work environment.
 
Panda said:
You can clearly see from an investment standpoint (Tuition ROI for your children), engineering, computer science, and business majors make the most money out of college. It is much better to be an engineering major at UCLA or a finance major at Haas (Berkeley), than to be a History or English major at Harvard.

I am assuming that pre-Law is only $45k.
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Yup. The other day, I attended a presentation on preparing for college early. Guest speakers included Paul Kanarek, the founder of The Princeton Review, and CEO of College Wise. I really enjoyed his presentation and also one from Breanne Boyle of College Wise. He said the most valuable undergrad degree is #1 Engineering followed by #2 Computer Science. He said students with those majors at any college will make more money than a student graduating from Yale with another major. They gave so much good information and dispelled many myths. Dude, I took so many notes. Paul goes around the globe to do speaking engagements. I highly recommend investing the time to attend one if anybody reading this gets the chance.
 
Wow those numbers are skewed. My husband made more than that as an intern at a big 4 accounting firm the summer of his senior year. Finance and accounting easily makes 6 figures with just a 4 year degree which is a pretty good roi on your college education. That said for certain majors the quality of the college really does matter. Wharton, USC, the IVYs will get you the one leg up connection into the major leagues like Goldman or the big 4 accounting firms. I guess that can also be said for majors like law. Guaranteed Harvard Law School grads are not coming out of there making $45k.

BTW where is medicine, dental - is that under biological sciences or health care?
 
Btw, I thought about taking the highlights of my notes on three of the presentations and making a "Cliffs Notes" version as a TI post. But I don't want to go through the trouble unless somebody is actually interested in it. It looks as though some of Paul's talks are available on Youtube anyway. I'm sure some of it will be stuff you already know... heck, some of it I already read on T.I. However, I enjoyed having stuff I already knew confirmed plus hearing new things that have changed for our kids these days as opposed to back in the day when we were applying to college.
 
Paris said:
BTW where is medicine, dental - is that under biological sciences or health care?
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I don't think these are included since they are postgraduate studies, the article only count undergraduate majors. 
 
SoCal said:
Btw, I thought about taking the highlights of my notes on three of the presentations and making a "Cliffs Notes" version as a TI post. But I don't want to go through the trouble unless somebody is actually interested in it. It looks as though some of Paul's talks are available on Youtube anyway. I'm sure some of it will be stuff you already know... heck, some of it I already read on T.I. However, I enjoyed having stuff I already knew confirmed plus hearing new things that have changed for our kids these days as opposed to back in the day when we were applying to college.
Click to expand...

I'm interested!
 
peppy said:
Paris said:
BTW where is medicine, dental - is that under biological sciences or health care?
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Those are considered post-graduate degrees and not covered in the survey.
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Figured so but then most people in those undergrad categories usually go on to post graduate studies in medicine, research, dental etc so you would figure their salaries would pull up the averages in those categories. As tuitions rise to exorbitant levels the ROI on almost all of these majors are not going to make sense based on their salary averages.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
I thought those Finance jobs were the 6 figure out of college jobs?

Law only $45k? Hmm.

Not sure if you can hire any software developers for $67k, they all want so much more.
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Software engineers with degrees who live in India and work offshore for U.S. companies) make a pittance and there are plenty of people waiting to take their place.......... sad they get taken by U.S. companies but I guess Cost of Living is way lower over there. Bet that skews the averages a bit.
 
Paris said:
Figured so but then most people in those undergrad categories usually go on to post graduate studies in medicine, research, dental etc so you would figure their salaries would pull up the averages in those categories. As tuitions rise to exorbitant levels the ROI on almost all of these majors are not going to make sense based on their salary averages.
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They probably only count those didn't pursue advance degree and maybe that explains why their income are just mediocre. 
 
Yawn.  They got 46,000 users to fill out a survey.  1.8M bachelor degrees were awarded in 2014.

"Those two majors come out on top in a new large-scale survey, called ?2015 State of College Hiring,? by Looksharp, a company that runs an entry-level and internship jobs site called Internmatch. It got 46,000 of its users to fill out a 52-question survey about everything from whether they got jobs following their internships (students with paid internships were three times more likely to have lined up full-time jobs than those who did unpaid internships) to how they look for jobs (Google, not surprisingly, is the No. 1 tool)"
 
ChasingRainbows said:
SoCal said:
Btw, I thought about taking the highlights of my notes on three of the presentations and making a "Cliffs Notes" version as a TI post. But I don't want to go through the trouble unless somebody is actually interested in it. It looks as though some of Paul's talks are available on Youtube anyway. I'm sure some of it will be stuff you already know... heck, some of it I already read on T.I. However, I enjoyed having stuff I already knew confirmed plus hearing new things that have changed for our kids these days as opposed to back in the day when we were applying to college.
Click to expand...

I'm interested!
Click to expand...

Now available HERE.
 
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