Below is PayScale.com’s shiny chart showing which college majors may lead a college graduate to a decent salary. For the full list, go here.
I tend to peruse these things with my manure-proof haz-mat suit on, just in case. School rankings lists, for example, are rife with opportunities for the less-than-upstanding number crunchers to make one school look better than another. This list, whether or not it’s perfect, is at least devoid of school names, which means no politics were involved with the making of the list. I also like that the engineers are clearly winning. But the fact that Social Work and Elementary Education are at the very bottom of the list is a sad little encapsulation of mankind’s priorities.
The short version of the methodology is that the numbers are based on the full-time salaries of college graduates who earned only a Bachelor’s degree in their particular major. For the full methodology, you can go here.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
Interesting list, and yes, sad to see education (which is what gets a person to the level of an aerospace engineer (they all went to first grade, right??) is at the bottom. These lists tend to be of no value in the sense that you should never pursue a career based on salary alone. I believe top-earners are those who are passionate about what they do and it is difficult to trudge through the educational path and day-to-day work if you are not passionate about what you’re doing. Ultimately, how high can you climb career-wise if you aren’t dedicated to your profession? Sure, the lists are interesting…but I wouldn’t say incredibly valuable from a “choosing your major” point-of-view.
Comment by Lynn M 07.23.09 @ 11:59 am