Dartmouth
Before I go on, a disclaimer about the study. The pool of respondents is not randomized, but rather self-selected and the statistics are self-reported online. PayScale only included respondents whose highest degree was a bachelors, which counts out lawyers, doctors and other jobs that require a degree. As Al Lee, PayScale's director of quantitative analysis, told Catherine Rampell:
"You're thinking of buying a college, if that's all you buy -- and undergraduate -without having to spend more money and time and effort to get another degree," Mr. Lee said, "you want to know what the return on that investment is."
And as for that return on investment, here are the top colleges ranked by highest median mid-career salary (first graph) and median starting salary (second graph):
Let's talk about what's not surprising: Engineers making bank. Check out the school types in the second graph. After Loma Linda (a Seventh-Day Adventist health services institution in southern California), you get a waterfall of engineering schools sprinkled with three Ivies.
Also unsurprising is the presence of Ivies in the first, mid-career list -- five out of the top 10 earning grads come from the Ivy League. And those numbers are obviously being depressed by the exclusion of doctors, lawyers, and academics.
Rampell serves up more graphs with a healthy dose of skepticism, and I'd just like to steal one more observation from her. Research has shown that attending one highly ranked college instead of another has, in the aggregate, very little impact over the students' future income, if you control for the ambition and work ethic of the student. As Alan B. Krueger explained in a nutshell: "'The best school that turned you down is a better predictor of your future income than the school you actually attended.''
*Update: If Dartmouth University's graduates were today the country's highest earners, that would be the least remarkable thing about the school's alumni, considering that "Dartmouth University" has not existed for 190 years and its bachelor degree holders would be about as old as the state of Vermont. What I meant to say was Dartmouth College. Thanks to Dylan Matthews for correction.
Also unsurprising is the presence of Ivies in the first, mid-career list -- five out of the top 10 earning grads come from the Ivy League. And those numbers are obviously being depressed by the exclusion of doctors, lawyers, and academics.
Rampell serves up more graphs with a healthy dose of skepticism, and I'd just like to steal one more observation from her. Research has shown that attending one highly ranked college instead of another has, in the aggregate, very little impact over the students' future income, if you control for the ambition and work ethic of the student. As Alan B. Krueger explained in a nutshell: "'The best school that turned you down is a better predictor of your future income than the school you actually attended.''
*Update: If Dartmouth University's graduates were today the country's highest earners, that would be the least remarkable thing about the school's alumni, considering that "Dartmouth University" has not existed for 190 years and its bachelor degree holders would be about as old as the state of Vermont. What I meant to say was Dartmouth College. Thanks to Dylan Matthews for correction.
A kid might choose one of the very few maritime colleges (engineering) and enjoy a starting salary over 70 grand and an income well over 120 grand about 8 years out of school. None of those are mentioned in this survey.
Why is Stanford listed as "engineering" and not as "private," like Duke or Notre Dame? Is it only looking at engineering graduates from Stanford, and all from those other schools?
Dartmouth College. Dartmouth University has been defunct since 1819. Sorry, but we Hanoverians tend to be touchy about this.
I think another thing not accounted for in this study is the higher cost of living in the Northeast and California which assuming that many alumns stay near where they went to college is where these schools are. I notice that while engineering schools are prevalent, Georgia Tech is not on the list. If most of their alums stay in the South then their salaries are lower because they are in an area that has a lower cost of living and hence lower salaries.
As a Carnegie-Mellon graduate (BSME '81), I find the results of this "self-selected ... self-reported" survey highly unlikely. It took nearly 30 years to pass the "Mid-Career Median", and that's only because I'm willing to get on an airplane twice a week and leave behind home and family. In working multiple regular (i.e.non-consulting) engineering positions (including Engineering Manager at an industrial equipment manufacturer), I never made over $60k. Engineers are very poorly valued and poorly paid in American society. To imply that a typical engineer can expect to pull in 100k+ is misleading, at best.
Engineers are very poorly valued and poorly paid in American society.
Not initialy - as mentioned above starting salaries are very high. What are your thoughts as to why they start so high but top out so quickly?
If engineers weren't valued then starting salaries would be low - that isnt' the case at all - it's the salaries after 5-10 years that stagnate.
Not initialy - as mentioned above starting salaries are very high.
The starting salaries are as suspect as the rest of the figures. Numbers like that may have occurred for a couple years near the peak of the dot com bubble, but they are certainly not indicative of the long term. For example, after graduating in 1981, I had several offers and took a job making a bit over 25K. This was on the high side for MechE graduates, and only EE’s were getting higher offers – ranging in the mid to high 20’s. It is doubtful that starting salaries from one specific school have gone up more than 2.5 times since then.
Apart from the inherently poor methodology of the study, many people have ulterior motives for perpetuating this sort of information. This helps “sell” college education and serves to further the 30 years our society has spent denigrating those who work with their hands – especially the skilled trades. This country needs electricians, plumbers, masons, etc as much as it needs engineers. These are the people who turn engineers’ designs into reality. They are certainly more valuable to society than investment bankers that invent derivatives!
But the most pernicious fallacy this perpetuates is that everyone is just around the corner from making 100K. Ignore the pesky fact that less than 16% of the population makes more than 100K, and only 1.5% make over 250K. It’s the Joe the Plumber myth – anyone can be rich tomorrow. The problem is not an inherent inequity in income distribution, it’s your own failure!