How reliable is pay scale?

Just wondering if anyone thinks this is a reliable source for average salaries or if there is a better source? Thanks

Just to clarify, I am looking mostly at average salary of college graduates by school with a BS at early career and mid career point.

If you are asking if YOUR kid will earn that much…then all bets are off. It’s averages…which means some kids earn more and some earn less.

And times change…

Pay by college graduated from will mostly reflect the distribution of majors (although colleges targeted by management consulting and Wall Street will also get a boost). It is no surprise that many colleges heavy in engineering and CS majors show up at the top of the list. But that does not mean that a biology major at (for example) Harvey Mudd or MIT has as good pay prospects. (You can see MIT graduates’ entry level pay by major at https://capd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/GSS2017.pdf )

Also, small sample size may make some college results less reliable.

Here is a different Payscale survey result, by major: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html . The best paid graduates in any major (mid career 90th percentile) do well, but the median paid graduates in some majors not so well (some fields like performing arts tend to be elite or bust fields).

Thanks ucbalumnus - very helpful.
We just want the information for a spreadsheet. (My H puts everything in a spreadsheet!)
As college acceptances roll in, we want a visual for our son that shows the differences between the colleges financially. Talking about loan debt and seeing it are very different things.
This way he can see the value of the school that offered great merit, versus the more “prestigious “ school that offered none, etc.
we understand it isn’t an exact science, but it is just one tool we’re using during the selection process.

However, just because the college is full of engineering or CS majors or is a Wall Street target does not mean that a biology major not interested in Wall Street will find a big pay packet at graduation.

Also, with majors associated with specific job types, there could be industry downturns. Petroleum engineering is the usual example where job prospects vary by unpredictable oil prices.

I.e. his major and career interests (as well as how good he is at them) could be much more important than the specific college he graduates from.

U.S. News includes PayScale figures in its college entries. This represents mainstream acceptance, which may or may not connote accuracy. I might consider the figures, particularly those for early career earnings, as roughly valid and informative when making comparisons across generally similar colleges with generally similar curricula. Even in these cases, however, differences of less than 5 or 10 percent should probably be disregarded in favor of most other aspects of importance.

Prospective major is much more relevant, IMO. An Accounting major at Regional State Uni has a decent chance at a good job right out of school, perhaps moreso than a Studies major from highly thought of LAC.

I don’t think that the payscale data can or should be used that way. That is, I think that whatever numbers you draw to put on your spreadsheet will be essentially fictitious. They rest on a false underlying assumption – that, for example, graduates of Princeton or MIT get paid more than graduates of Rutgers or RPI because their university was better. But there are way too many confounding variables to draw that conclusion.

Put it this way: Princeton is full of exceptionally competitive, high achieving students, many who come from wealthy or well-connected families. Rutgers… not so much.

So Payscale tells us those Princeton grads have median earnings of $72K (early career) and $141K (mid career), and that 45% have STEM degrees. And for Rutgers (New Brunswick) the number are lower – for example, $58K early, $111K mid - and 28% with STEM degrees.

But that tells us nothing whatsoever about what earnings will be for an individual student. Basically, it means that on average, the Princeton grads will have more classmates with higher paying jobs… which may offer a little bit of a networking edge. But it doesn’t tell us what any individual will earn or be capable of earning. The medians for the more selective or prestigious schools are drawn from a pool of students who started out with higher earning capacities and most likely higher ambitions and career goals.

Keep in mind that if your son needs to take on greater debt to attend a school that, on paper, has grads with higher median salaries, the debt itself may be a factor that limits your son’s opportunities.

The problem with your idea of putting it on a spreadsheet as a counterweight to debt load is it could lead to him taking a path that would result in lesser opportunities on an individual level, particularly at schools that are generous with merit aid. Because he’s indulging in the false assumption that if he gets a degree from Pricey U that will lead to significantly higher earnings than the degree from Discount U. And the reality is that geography and field of study are probably more significant. So opting for an urban or suburban university located in a high-cost-of-living area in proximity to major employers tied to a student’s major may very well be a factor. Of couse, high-cost-of-livng is a double edged sword – wages are higher, but the higher pay might not compensate for the higher expenses that those employees face just to get by.

I mean, you have to keep in mind that the median is a halfway point, and by definition 50% of all grads are earning at the median level or below. And the figures on Payscale reflect only information drawn from people who voluntarily fill out Payscale surveys … which are unlikely to be people who are unemployed, underemployed, or taking leave from employment – which means that real median (“all” graduates vs. “employed graduates who fill out surveys”) is likely to be much lower at any school.

Calmom - thank you for such a thoughtful post. This is why it is so helpful to share ideas here. I really appreciate your input.

Very few of the schools report grads who do not earn anything because they choose not to work, continue to grad school, die, drop off the grid. The service academies always report high earnings because every grad has the same pay, and even the bottom of the class get that same job and pay grade.

If the data is self reported, it may be skewed. Wonder if the census bureau might have data?? How about using glassdoors?

By definition, pay scale is self-reported anecdotes (anecdata?) Thus, by definition, it is just numbers as every student in AP Stats learns.

Glassdoor is no different.

I agree with almost everything in calmom’s excellent post, but I think the point above needs some correction. The first sentence is no doubt true: Princeton is full of exceptionally competitive, high-achieving students many of whom arrive at college with their futures secure. And even for those Princetonians who were not to the manor born, the sky is pretty much the limit (e.g. Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Samuel Alito).

But what’s “not so much” at Rutgers is not the headcount of people like that; it’s the exclusivity. At least 99% of Princeton students check at least a couple of boxes on a list of qualities that includes high-achieving, high intelligence, hardworking, competitive, cultured, connected, wealthy. Rutgers also has plenty of people who have exactly the same qualities – maybe even more such people than Princeton has, in absolute numbers, given how much larger than Princeton Rutgers is. But precisely because Rutgers is so much bigger, its student body also includes many students who are not as richly endowed, literally and metaphorically, as their most elite classmates.

That doesn’t make Rutgers a bad place for an elite student to attend, however you want to define “elite.” An elite student is unlikely to catch cooties by breathing the same air as people who scored 100 points lower on their SAT I tests, or whose families come from a lower income bracket. The overall experience may not be quite so heady and privileged as at Princeton – may be more like, um, real life – but whether that’s good, bad, or neutral for a particular student depends a lot on individual character. There’s precious little evidence to evaluate how different types of college affect truly comparable students, but what little evidence there is suggests that, at least as far as earnings are concerned, the qualities a student has when he or she arrives at college are far more important than any differences among colleges.

We and our kids paid NO attention to projected income of graduates. There was far too much uncertainty about what they might major in (they kept options open until after their first year in college), whether they might attend graduate school, and where they might live after graduation. We knew one would be in the art/design world, and she attended RISD. We didn’t know, however, that a few years after graduation she would decide to earn an MBA. Same with our other kid. He majored in economics (not business), and took a first job in economic consulting; got bored real fast, but what he’s doing now uses his quantitative/statistical training in a novel way.

Our approach as parents was this: send the kids to colleges with strong programs and reputations, let the kids develop advanced skills and experiences (including some time studying abroad). After a few years in the real economy the school “name” might have a marginal impact on the graduate’s credibility but 90% of life achievement (financially and otherwise) isn’t going to depend on the name of the college they attended or “connections” from the college; rather it will be their own skills and experience that matters most, as well as a substantial component of chance/luck and their own energy.

JHS - that makes a lot of sense.
Mackinaw - my son is “iffy” about his major also. He has a general idea, but nothing concrete. Also, I would be surprised if he didn’t go on to grad school. He is also a very hard worker and I really have no doubts about his succeeding in college.

This has been extremely helpful. So I’ll be removing this from my spreadsheet!

There are reliable sources for salaries for those entering certain professions/careers/jobs with just a BA degree. Accounting & management consulting & investment banking certainly have fairly accurate numbers available with a thorough internet search. But I do not place much trust in or reliance on average salaries by college or university as there is not enough specificity to make the numbers meaningful.

Over the years, I have found Glass Door and Robert Half/Accountemps to be very helpful. Robert Half has accounting and finance career information, including location and company size pay adjustments.

I think that Glassdoor is very helpful for job holders, job seekers & job applicants, and together with Payscale provides useful information for those applicants. Extremely useful for salary & rate negotiations, etc, especially when tied to job titles, responsibilities, and geographic region. There are tools on the Payscale site that allow entry of specific information tied to experience — and I think those tools are also valuable to employers as well. It just helps everyone to know the going rate, what expectations are reasonable and which are not.

It is the aggregating of the data and tying it to a less relevant variable (undergrad college) that I feel reflects a serious misunderstanding of what the numbers actually reflect.

Now using that data tied to specific career aspirations would be different. Not tied to a specific school, but certainly tied to considering options for undergrad along with cost. So the equation is going to be different for a student who wants to become a teacher, vs. one who wants to practice medicine, vs. another who wants a career in the business world. And in each instance, the student is going to want to consider undergraduate costs coupled with the value of that undergraduate school as a lead-in to those career goals, as long as both short & long-term prospects for earning within those fields.

Once employed within a specific occupational field, salaries seldom relate to undergraduate school. Usually the person enters a system with fairly set pay scales. Payment variations are more likely to be due to work experience and accomplishments than the source of undergrad degree. It may be that there are some more exclusive, high-paying areas that pay particularly well and center their recruiting efforts on bachelor’s level graduates of undergrad colleges - so if an individual student aspires to that, then the specific college might make a difference. (i.e., if you want to work on Wall Street, attending podunk U. in flyover country probably isn’t the best bet) But that’s not what the payscale data on colleges & universities shows. For the most part, the higher paying jobs go to people with advanced degrees, and to the extent that the source of the degree matters, then the employers are looking at the graduate degree, not undergrad. And the students pursuing graduate or professional degrees are going to have lower early-career earnings during the time frame when they are still completing their educations – whether or not that is reflected in Payscale data.

I found Glassdoor to be pretty accurate, but a little on a low side probably because some information is a little outdated.