What Does Your College Major Actually Pay?
A recent New York Times article caught my attention because it looks at college outcomes in a way that families do not always get to see. Instead of asking whether graduates from one college earn more than graduates from another, the article looks at earnings for specific majors at specific colleges. Using federal earnings data analyzed by the HEA Group, the Times compared the median income of students who graduated from particular programs in 2017-18 and 2018-19 and had received federal financial aid. The result is a searchable look at how much graduates were earning about four years after completing their degrees.
*Warning: This article is behind the NYT paywall.
Some of the numbers are pretty eye-opening. The highest-earning program in the data was mathematics at Duke, where graduates had median earnings of $297,029. Carnegie Mellon computer science graduates were at $268,121, while Carnegie Mellon electrical and communications engineering graduates were at $250,168. On the other side of the spectrum, the article points out that graduates of some highly regarded arts programs had much lower early-career earnings. Juilliard music graduates, for example, had median earnings of $32,842 in the data.
What I found most interesting, though, is that the college you attend seems to matter very differently depending on what you study. The article compares mechanical engineering graduates from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Alabama and finds only about a $10,000 difference in earnings. For computer science graduates from those same schools, the gap is more than $150,000. In other words, there are some fields where attending a particular institution may have a significant relationship with early-career earnings, while in others the difference between schools may be much smaller. The data also provide some reassurance for families worried that every student needs to pursue a STEM degree. Across all programs, English majors had median earnings of $48,920 four years after graduation and sociology graduates were at $52,197, both above the $34,808 median cited for high school graduates.
There are some important limitations to keep in mind before using these numbers to build a college list. These are early-career earnings, not lifetime earnings, and the data only include students who received federal financial aid. Programs with 15 or fewer graduates were left out for privacy reasons, and some of the eye-catching numbers come from relatively small groups. Duke's mathematics figure, for example, represents just 17 graduates. The article also makes an important point that is easy to lose when looking at salary charts: college has value that cannot be measured on a tax return, including what students learn, the relationships they build, and the networks and experiences they gain.
I would never recommend choosing a college or major simply because it produces the highest salary four years after graduation. But I do think families should have access to this information. When colleges can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year, it is reasonable to understand what graduates from a particular program actually experience after leaving. The most useful part of this data may not be identifying the "best" degree. It is giving families another question to add to the college search: What tends to happen to students who study what I want to study at this particular school? That is a much more useful question than simply asking whether a college has a good reputation.
