I wonder if people check this when student apply colleges? Here is website http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors
So much depends on the major. Colleges with an engineering school will tend to be at the higher end of the list.
Only the data from students with jobs get included in this study. Therefore, an engineering graduate from Bama earns more than an unemployed women’s study graduate from Harvard.
I thought people who visited the site and input their data are included so a tiny sample. Or am I reading that wrong? Something I wondered too for Ivies and tier one schools yes incomes higher but when you look where most of the jobs are it’s usually right there by the school for the majority and amazingly thru are all very high cost of living areas,. So…is the income higher because of the school’s reputation or where the job is located?
Payscale article refers also show by type (Public, Private, LAC, Research University, Engineering school, Business school etc) of school and also by State if you wants to check your college location. I know Salary is not everything and i agree with you it depend on your major and location those list is just for reference. Just like top college list, too.
I often think U.S. News and World report give wrong idea for teens and adults. I still don’t understand people apply all the Ivy League colleges or top school. I think all the lvy League schools are different characters and other schools, too. For me that is looking for just looking for prestige. Book should be what is best college for YOU. Of course some kids match Ivy League schools and that is great but not for everybody.
Does it take into consideration graduate/professional school? A lot of Biology/Political Science majors wouldn’t technically be employed after graduation if they’re in Medical/Law School.
The problem with the USNews rankings is it doesn’t appear to include a single metric on student success… not while in school… not after graduation. While Payscale ONLY focuses on their graduate’s success. There needs to be a middle ground, but since that’s not offered, I’d go with Payscale over USNews.
Most of USNews is opinion… even from high school guidance counselors! I’ve met most of the guidance counselors in my school district and, they might be wonderful people, they are no better equipped to rank schools than I.
Before dismissing Payscale’s numbers as a “small percentage,” you need to understand how much sites like Payscale and Glassdoor are used by professionals to gauge their current incomes. I’m a 55 year old professional in the tech industry. I manage a large section of the Northeast megalopolis and have contact with literally hundreds of organizations. It’s rare to find someone who does not use at least one of these sites. Of course I don’t take a running poll of everyone, but whenever the subject comes up, everyone… not just the people who may have brought up the subject… uses them.
That all being said, In a perfect world I’d like to see USNews drop it’s useless opinion inputs and replace it with real metrics:
Quality of professors
… some reporting on the percentage those professors actually teach their own classes.
Quality of facilities.
Student retention
… freshman and later years reported separately.
Mean salary of graduates
… same profiles as Payscale.
Real placement info… not survey results.
… real info from the placement office.
If the school has a high percentage of students going on for higher degrees, how many applied for jobs, but couldn’t get one? …so they decided to stay in school. I personally know this reason is quite common at Cornell.
Student satisfaction survey.
… OK, this is opinion, but it’s a great source of opinions.
l
Somebody mentioned that Payscale is really depend on Major and Place you get job and I agree with. But my child will go engineering field (and child go to STEM school) and most likely to find a job in the same states I thought Payscale gave us pretty good reference.
For PayScale to be useful, it needs to stratify by major as well as school (it has a limited amount of by-major results available, but they are nowhere near complete and apparently less emphasized that their other rankings).
A mostly engineering school may rank very highly in PayScale, but a biology major there would be deceiving himself/herself if s/he believed that s/he has as good job prospects as the typical (engineering) student at the school.
The data may be interesting to look at, but the nature of the data and its limitations must be considered, lest one perhaps over-extrapolates.
When I last looked at this, which admittedly was several years ago, payscale excluded graduates with higher degrees than the bachelors… Most of the people I knew from my own undergrad school subsequently got advanced degrees, which in many cases arguably their undergrad helped them attain. And, generally, they made more money as a result. Often a lot more. All these people’s outcomes would be excluded from Payscale.
It did not account for different majors (making it virtually useless just on that basis alone) and did not account for regional differentials in compensation. People on the coasts often get paid more for doing the same jobs than in the heartland, where living costs are much lower.
Because of the lack of differentiation, excluded people, etc, several largely engineering schools in the (high cost., high $) coasts, which had relatively small % students going to grad school, and grads who stayed mostly local, showed up highest on their list. so people in high pay occupations in high-pay regions make relatively a lot, for those reasons.Big whoop.
Also the information is merely self-reported by those who submitted info- a sample which may not be random, or accurate, or representative of the underlying populations of graduates of those schools. Or statistically significant.
Perhaps they have changed their methodology since I last looked, in which case it might be more useful.
Payscale may have it’s faults, but USNews doesn’t include a single metric on student success… not academic, not career… nothing… zilch! How can you rank a system and completely ignore its product?
Comparing people with graduate degrees is a can of worms. I don’t know this for sure, but speculate the vast majority of graduate degrees don’t come from the school these people initially attended for their bachelors degree. How would you partition these people?
If a school is supposedly “better” than others, as the its ranking implies, then the population with bachelors from that school should do better than a population of bachelors from another. What’s wrong with that logic?
Other things complained about… majors, regional pay differences, etc… are completely ignored in USNews.
Yeah, it’s not perfect…so… throw out the baby with the bathwater?
IMHO, it beats the heck out of USNews, because it gives at least an idea of student success from each school. Something completely missing from anywhere else.
@maikai, this is why some folks think the Forbes ranking is better.
Personally, I like my tiering system (which uses some Forbes subrankings):
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents-p3.html
You mean this list from Forbes? http://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2014/08/04/top-100-sat-scores-ranking-which-colleges-have-the-brightest-kids/
@maikai, this is why some folks think the Forbes ranking is better.
Personally, I like my tiering system (which uses some of Forbes subrankings):
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents-p3.html
Though I might incorporate SAT score and research prowess as well.
Did you check this list by business insider? http://www.businessinsider.com/complete-ranking-of-americas-smartest-colleges-2013-9
Yes, I looked at Payscale and many college rankings. Each was just a minor datapoint in a collection of many factors.
That you do not find the USNWR rankings to be what you are looking for does not mean that you should ignore the defects that Payscale’s rankings have. Payscale’s rankings tend to be highly reflective of the mix of majors that students at the given school study, so using Payscale’s rankings as an indicator of how good the educational results are can be very misleading. If X is a decent school for engineering, and only offers engineering majors, it may do better than Y in Payscale, even if Y is a better school for engineering but also has lots of biology majors.
A major problem with Payscale’s major by college data is sampling size. Looking at a list of “Most Popular” majors at UA, you’ll find a sampling size of 9 for Electrical Engineers, 7 for Financial Analyst, 7 for Software Engineers, etc.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/School=University_of_Alabama_-_Main_Campus/Salary
The challenge with outcome data, is that it has to come from the IRS. This is one of the metrics proposed by the Obama Administration to measure colleges. However, the federal government has been having a hard time pulling together the info.
Florida uses salary info as one of the performance metrics for it’s 12 public universities. However, this data is limited to graduates who stay in state. Florida has no info on anyone that moves out of state. These numbers will have to come from the federal government.
AP Stats is a great class – highly recommended. In it, folks will find out that self-reported data is worthless.
Neither does pay scale for the above reason.
Not even sure that pay scale even rises to the level of “datapoint.” It is just a collection of anecdotes.
“If a school is supposedly “better” than others, as the its ranking implies, then the population with bachelors from that school should do better than a population of bachelors from another. What’s wrong with that logic?”
Because the sample drawn from the underlying student populations from each school may not be representative, or comparable.
Firstly, you are excluding each schools’ highest performers at probably a differential rate by excluding higher degrees.
If the 'better" school has a relatively high proportion of its “better” graduates going to grad programs, then you are comparing performance of “lesser” (overall) grads of the “better” school to a more representaive selection of grads of the “worse” school.
Secondly you are ignoring the mix of majors at each school.
It is common knowlege that liberal arts majors, absent higher degrees, on average make less than engineers.
Let’s say the bachelors holders from the “worst” school are 80% engineers+ business majors, But the bachelors holders of the “better” school are only 10% engineers + business majors. Of the other 90% at the “better” school , maybe half go on to graduate & professional programs, eg law,.medical school. Because they can. Whereupon they earn much more. But then you exclude all of those higher degree earners. What you are left with is mostly the pool of liberal arts majors there who do not get advanced degrees. Which may be a highly non-representative sample from even the liberal arts majors at the “better” school, since so many of them do get advanced degrees. And comparing that non-representative sample from the “better school” to a more-representative bunch of engineeers from the “worse” school. This in no way implies the (properly sampled) engineers+ business majors from the “better” school have worse outcomes that the engineers+business majors from the worse school. But the results of these majors are not isolated out, they are just subsumed within he majority other majors at the “better” school. So one can’t tell.
Thirdly you are ignoring regional pay discrepancies. Schools that are in the heartland,. or have more national recruiting so more of their students wind up in the heartland, may show lower salaries merely due to regional pay discrepancies.
Meanwhile, after cost of living is appropriately accounted for, those people in the heartland may actually be netting much more.