Reply to 16 highest-paying college majors, 5 years after graduation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sounds depressing. I was an art major and made $80k right after graduation.  That was in 2002s dollars[/quote]
You don't understand statistics, but then, you're an art major.[/quote]

I'm work in statistics and I think PP does understand: you can't predict a single outcome from averages across such a broad category--especially one that does zero modeling of predictive factors and ignores important variabilities across institutions and important factors across time periods (e.g., what is the lifetime ROI).   A better way to draw insight is that for any given person the profession that they are most likely to earn well in is the one where their skills and interests are the highest and that overlaps with an area that society is willing to pay.  That is where an individual is likely to find their highest salary in an evolving career that will sustain over their lifetime.  Much more sensible to introspect on that on some dumb averages about salary at 5 years that strips away all the predictive factors that will shape your individual outcome.[/quote]

Nope.  Majors and 5 year out is still a good reference [b]assuming everything else is equal.[/b]

You can also look into 10 year 20 year or life time.

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Uh, that was my point--why would we care about this given that there is no way to control for everything else being equal and it's the "everything else" that is the most relevant factor? As for lifetime impact, it's the variabilities around predictive factors and institutional differences that likely create the interaction effects over the lifetime. 
And my response was to the sort of "stats shaming" of the art major using an anecdote when deriving individual meaning from these averages is pretty useless too.

Engineering is a surefire major (if you graduate with it) because it has with a relatively high floor, medium ceiling and relatively little impact from institutional quality so it's going to score well in averages because it has relatively little variability.  Even adding some standard deviations around the majors' ROI would show a more interesting story, as would examining the outcomes of people who started an engineering major and had to switch.  They might be more likely to be left in an institution without strengths in other majors and with a low GPA making transfer to a better school for their new major not easy.  Who knows?
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