Is it wrong to pursue engineering because of prestige and social status?

[Data10]

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Somehow If payscale is for one year I don’t believe it’s accurate, the data is reporting after all, also according to U of Michigan CoE placement report, EE graduates get paid less than CS. I see the same with UCSD, so I don’t know what to believe or who to believe.

Payscale, The National Association of Colleges and Employers, and others who do national starting salary surveys are not lying. I expect the difference between salary surveys of certain individual college surveys relates to 3 main factors – small sample size (some colleges have same as fewer than 20 within a major who choose to participate in surveys), location bias in hiring & demand for specific majors, and bias in which colleges offer the major (CS is offered at more and different colleges than EE). For these reasons, you can also find salary surveys at individual colleges that favor EE, such as Lehigh’s survey at <a href=“http://www4.lehigh.edu/admissions/undergrad/success/placement.aspx”>http://www4.lehigh.edu/admissions/undergrad/success/placement.aspx&lt;/a&gt; , which is quoted below. Note that the mean EE salary is ~$20,000 greater than than mean CS salary, a greater difference than occurred in the Michigan survey you quoted. And the highest reported CS salary of $70k was similar to the lowest reported EE salary of $68k, suggesting nearly all EE majors in the survey had a greater starting salary than their CS counterparts.</p>

<p>Bioengineering – $64,333<br>
Chemical Engineering - $67,699
Civil/Environmental Engineering - $57,551<br>
Computer Engineering – $59,250
**Computer Science – $59,375<a href=“range%20of%20$49k%20to%20$70k”>/b</a>
**Electrical Engineering - $79,333 <a href=“range%20of%20$68k%20to%20$100k”>/b</a>
Industrial Engineering – $60,875<br>
Information Systems & Engineering – $65,667<br>
Materials Science & Engineering - $58,250
Mechanical Engineering – $60,933</p>

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All I know is that DH and I had a harder time finding job when we were unemployed because we both like hardware better or have hardware experience while my brother and his wife found job easier because they are both software. BTW, In order to find job easier, I had to make my resume looks like I did a lot of software and that seems to do the trick.

Your sample of 2 people has a similar issues to the college salary surveys discussed above – small sample size and location bias. I also started in EE hardware and had no problem finding jobs after graduation. I later transitioned into systems/theory/design. My company’s website currently lists open positions in both fields (not certain it is still accurate). We’ve had trouble finding talented persons in both hardware and systems. However, being a sample of 1, I do not assume my experiences are representative of all EE majors/jobs in the United States.</p>