10 most profitable college majors and highest paying college degrees

[Elmore Furth]

Hey, they told me an Art History major was the way to meet chicks.

Here's Money College's list of the highest and lowest-paying college degrees, based on data gathered by Payscale.com. If you love numbers and science, you're in luck: "The kinds of majors where you learn to integrate mathematics and science with the everyday world have a tremendous benefit in terms of earnings potential," ...

Ten most profitable majors that turn into the highest paying college degrees:

1. Engineering. ...
Average first year salary: $59,000. Average mid-career salary: $101,000.

2. Economics....
Average first year salary: $50,200. Average mid-career salary: $101,000.

3. Physics. . ..
Average starting salary: $51,100. Average mid-career salary: $98,800.

4. Computer Science. ...
Average starting salary: $56,400. Average mid-career salary: $97,400.

5. Statistics....
Average career salary: $48,600. Average mid-career salary: $94,500.

6. Biochemistry. ...
Average starting salary: $41,700. Average mid-career salary: $94, 200.

7. Mathematics. ...
Average career salary: $47,000. Average mid-career salary: $93, 600.

8. Construction Management....
Average starting salary: $53,400. Average mid-career salary: $89,600.

9. Information Systems. ...
Average starting salary: $51,400. Average mid-career salary: $87,000.

10. Geology....
Average starting salary: $45,000. Average mid-career salary: $84,200.Source



10 most profitable college majors and highest paying college degrees

[KansDem]

1. Yeah, but eventually you discover you'd rather have met more "checks" than "chicks"

The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind'

(excerpt)
Everyone has told her that "there are always places for good people in academe." She begins to obsess about the possibility of some kind of fatal personal shortcoming. She goes through multiple mock interviews, and takes business classes, learning to present herself for nonacademic positions. But again and again, she is passed over in favor of undergraduates who are no different from people she has taught for years. Maybe, she wonders, there's something about me that makes me unfit for any kind of job.

This goes on for years: sleepless nights, anxiety, escalating and increasingly paralyzing self-doubt, and a host of stress-induced ailments. She has even removed the Ph.D. from her résumé, with some pain, but she lives in dread that interviewers will ask what she has been doing for the last 12 years. (All her old friends are well established by now, some with families, some with what seem to be high-powered careers. She lives in a tiny apartment and struggles to pay off her student loans.) What's left now but entry-level clerical work with her immediate supervisor just three years out of high school?

She was the best student her adviser had ever seen (or so he said); it seemed like a dream when she was admitted to a distinguished doctoral program; she worked so hard for so long; she won almost every prize; she published several essays; she became fully identified with the academic life; even distancing herself from her less educated family. For all of those reasons, she continues as an adjunct who qualifies for food stamps, increasingly isolating herself to avoid feelings of being judged. Her students have no idea that she is a prisoner of the graduate-school poverty trap. The consolations of teaching are fewer than she ever imagined.

Such people sometimes write to me about their thoughts of suicide, and I think nothing separates me from them but luck.

[dems_rightnow]

2. LOL

Those are pretty much nerdy professions. Don't be offended, I love nerds....

[Dreamer Tatum]

3. So it isn't really who should GO to college - it's who should BORROW to go

Borrowing money to finance a fine arts degree is a losing proposition.

[customerserviceguy]

6. And every one of our college aid programs

from loans, to grants, to scholarships, treats all educational paths as equally valuable.

It's time for that nonsense to stop.

[Ilsa]

4. My BFF's daughter is a PhD candidate in Biochemistry or

something like it. Her undergrad was two majors. She's also one of the prettiest young ladies I've ever met, and one of the kindest.

Yes, there are lovely, marriageable "chicks" in the Sciences.

[RC]

16. My own daughter is going for an engineering degree.

Almost all A's also. :fistbump:

A picture of her T-shirt yesterday.

[elocs]

5. It's better to go to college, or simply do, for something personally fulfilling and rewarding

than just for what brings the highest income.

Those are the people who could truly say on their deathbeds, "Gee, I wish I'd spent more time at work", but then again it never really was work to them.

[customerserviceguy]

8. Fine

if you, or your mommy or daddy wants to pay for it. The misallocation of scarce public resources to devote to what makes people feel good has got to go. It doesn't make any sense for us as a nation to borrow money from China to send our kids off to classes in useless things that have slim to zero chance of paying off those loans.

[Oregone]

7. "Computer Science"

:rofl:


Sure...till you're outsourced

[customerserviceguy]

10. Yeah, that's what I was thinking

The State of Washington paid for me to get an associate's degree in computer networking back in 2002-03, and it's been useless for trying to get any kind of job. The only thing I can do with it is make a few bucks on the side fixing people's computers so that they don't have to get ripped off by the Geek Squad.

[OhioChick]

15. My first thought, as well. n/t

[City Lights]

9. My daughter is starting college in the fall and will be majoring in Physics.

Thanks for posting this. My son will be a junior in the fall and is undecided about a career path. Maybe this will help him. :-)

[3waygeek]

11. I have degrees in 3 of the top 10

(computer science, physics, mathematics). However, my mid-career salary is somewhat less than the survey data suggests. Those numbers must include managers; they make quite a bit more than us lowly software engineers.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

14. Depends where you are and what kind of work you are doing

MIC pays S/W types quite well, especially if you are an embedded/assembly kind of coder.

[Warpy]

17. Well, that's really the problem

Your lifespan in your chosen field is limited to a few short years in things like the hard sciences. Then you're either kicked "up" to management or let go in favor of a fresh faced kid with a glossy new diploma or worse, a fresh faced kid on an H1-B visa.

[jody]

12. The top 10 majors all involve science & mathematics. Math/science are basic skills essential for

those who will discover and invent new products/services in the 21st century.

Fortuitously society only needs a few hundred thousand women/men for those jobs. All others can enjoy a free ride.

"Behind every advance of the human race is a germ of creation growing in the
mind of some lone individual, an individual whose dreams waken him in the night
while others contentedly sleep." (Crawford Greenewalt)

[ProgressiveProfessor]

13. What many miss is this is one of the key drives in the 70 cents to a dollar meme

Women are in the majority as college students at all levels. However, if you look at the fields in the OP, men are in the majority, at all levels. That choice of majors impacts income would seem to be pretty basic, but it is ignored when comparing wages by gender.

Of professional interest to me is that there has been a considerable drop in women in Comp Sci. They are now a much smaller fraction than they were in the 70s and early 80s. Why is unclear. My daughter was often the only woman in the 400 and 500 level classes at a top 10 Comp Sci school.