16 highest-paying college majors, 5 years after graduation

[Anonymous]

Engineers are hot out of the gate. There’s a natural ceiling though unless they move into management
It would interesting to see a comparison of 35 year old individual contributor engineers vs Director level folks with those dreaded Liberal Arts or Marketing degrees

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These salaries look awfully low. My mid-career CS staffers are well beyond these numbers. Average 200K with bonus. We pay the new grads 100K.

Do you live in the DMV? It's a big country.

[Anonymous]

When I graduated as a mechanical engineer 25 years ago, my starting salary was $58,000.

It's definitely strange that college graduate are not making much more a quarter century later. What's going on?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I graduated as a mechanical engineer 25 years ago, my starting salary was $58,000.

It's definitely strange that college graduate are not making much more a quarter century later. What's going on?

Well we import a lot of them now don’t we?

[Anonymous]

Get an engineering degree and work a few years. Then get an MBA to get over the engineering plateau. I did this and am making $600K, will probably top out at around $800K-$1M.

[Anonymous]

They ranked by majors, not professions. We don’t know where they ended up.

Easily half of the engineering majors I know didn’t become engineers. They went into mgmt/strategic consulting, finance, MBA, software, patent, entrepreneur, etc.

[Anonymous]

Studies also say that once you have enough money to be comfortable, money does not make you happy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They ranked by majors, not professions. We don’t know where they ended up.

Easily half of the engineering majors I know didn’t become engineers. They went into mgmt/strategic consulting, finance, MBA, software, patent, entrepreneur, etc.

The fact is they end up better with the majors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Studies also say that once you have enough money to be comfortable, money does not make you happy

Yes, having enough money is very very important and crucial.

[Anonymous]

Tell that to all the CS majors right now who can’t find an internship

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Engineers are hot out of the gate. There’s a natural ceiling though unless they move into management
It would interesting to see a comparison of 35 year old individual contributor engineers vs Director level folks with those dreaded Liberal Arts or Marketing degrees

Chance of a person with an engineering degree moving into management vs a person with liberal arts/marketing.

Where do you want to bet your money?

We are talking statistics, not some random anecdotes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell that to all the CS majors right now who can’t find an internship

How's liberal arts majors doing?

[Anonymous]

I'd love to see it by gender and race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Engineers are hot out of the gate. There’s a natural ceiling though unless they move into management
It would interesting to see a comparison of 35 year old individual contributor engineers vs Director level folks with those dreaded Liberal Arts or Marketing degrees

Chance of a person with an engineering degree moving into management vs a person with liberal arts/marketing.

Where do you want to bet your money?

We are talking statistics, not some random anecdotes.

Yes, but there are so many variables here. I've worked in the manufacturing sector for most of my career, and there are plenty of Engineers + MBA types in the C-suite. I would imagine that's not the same at other types of companies.
And you also have to compare how many engineering degrees were awarded historically vs liberal arts/marketing. Is the data available based on percentages?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get an engineering degree and work a few years. Then get an MBA to get over the engineering plateau. I did this and am making $600K, will probably top out at around $800K-$1M.

I never understand this advice if you are just remaining in the same industry/company. I know plenty of engineers/STEM majors that moved up through the ranks without an MBA, or of course went out and started their own company. It is more important that you actually want to be a manager...which many engineers do not.

It's another thing if you want to move into VC or P/E...where an MBA can help you make that pivot.