https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/business/liberal-arts-stem-salaries.html
In the Salary Race, Engineers Sprint but English Majors Endure
By David Deming
New York Times
Sept. 20, 2019
“The advantage for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) majors fades steadily after their first jobs, and by age 40 the earnings of people who majored in fields like social science or history have caught up.”
I totally believe this. Even thirty years ago when I graduated engineers made more compared to others out of school. But after about ten years, my engineering friends were actually making less than the liberal arts folks. Probably still exists. Same thing for the top schools vs. regular schools. Top school kids usually make more out of college and that can continue ( only since few people take a step back salary wise). But, many go into another field in which case, there are others with better experience whose salaries will be higher.
In general I think salary is a function of job and personal characteristics. Some will take a job at any salary and some will only take the highest paying job regardless of interest.
I totally agree with the final conclusion that non STEM majors are valuable and colleges should not be cutting majors.
However, the salary argument falls flat for me. According to the article, the STEM majors have close to two decades of higher earnings. That’s a big deal when it comes to amassing wealth, paying off loans, buying a home, saving for retirement, etc… And moving into a managerial role for a STEM major can be very lucrative as well.
Prediction of which major(s) will consistently do well in the future is foolhardy. A student needs to do what interests her/him and s/he has some talents in it. Critical thinking skills certainly aren’t limited to liberal arts majors only, and they are needed regardless of one’s major. Experience alone won’t keep someone in the job, as machines can accumulate more “experiences” faster than any human alone (or even collectively as a group) as AI becomes more and more mainstream.
The use of average (versus median) pay levels does skew of the numbers upward.
“STEM” and “liberal arts” are not mutually exclusive categories. Subjects like biology are in both categories.
The writer references his own paper at https://www.nber.org/papers/w25065 , but it is behind a paywall except for those eligible for free download as listed on that page.
@ucbalumnus I believe you can see it all here.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ddeming/files/dn_stem_june2019.pdf
Some bits from the paper at https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ddeming/files/dn_stem_june2019.pdf
The difference between average and median earnings is rather large. The paper lists average college graduate earnings for all categories of majors as being over $100k in age 41-50, but https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/career_earnings_by_college_major/ shows that median earnings for college graduates (all majors combined) peak at $63k at 26 years of experience (specific majors can be selected on that web site).
Well, yeah. Plenty of students major in the liberal arts and aim for careers in business, law, medicine, etc. It’s no secret that it doesn’t matter whether you majored in chemical engineering or Islamic studies when it comes to law school admissions.
It’s arguably more helpful to consider salary info for those without advanced degrees. Georgetown’s “Economic Value of College Majors” report is a few years old but offers detailed salary information for each major. Unsurprisingly, engineering majors had the highest salaries among graduates with only bachelor’s degrees.
Majors in education, the arts, and social work had the lowest salaries.
The Georgetown report found that mid-career salaries of humanities and social science majors (with the notable exception of econ) were lower than for many STEM majors. Examples:
AI is the disruptor…find a career path that is least likely to be automated.
Yuval Harari writes in https://ideas.ted.com/the-rise-of-the-useless-class/ that “In the 21st century we might witness the creation of a massive new unworking class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society. This “useless class” will not merely be unemployed — it will be unemployable.”
Good point @warblersrule. Does this study adequately control for advanced degree attainment? Advanced degree holders in Medicine, Law, and Business (MBAs) can have a much higher salary no matter the undergraduate degree major.
The Hamilton Project used the ACS data to calculate median lifetime earnings by major and came to a different conclusion. Engineering majors have much higher lifetime earnings than liberal arts majors. Here’s the chart:
https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/legacy/files/downloads_and_links/MajorDecisions-Figure_2a.pdf
Doug Webber a labor economist at Temple also calculated the projected lifetime earnings by major using 2012-2016 ACS data and found that engineering degrees came out ahead on median lifetime earnings:
http://www.doug-webber.com/expected_all.pdf
College attendees in general (no matter the major) came out ahead of the median high school graduate.
I was unable to find the earnings numbers in the ACS survey that the article lists. Perhaps they are cherry picked or use a non-obvious methodology. A table showing early and mid career earnings by major using the same ACS survey source is at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market/college-labor-market_compare-majors.html and summarized below. Median earnings of economics majors seems to approach engineering and CS earnings , but other social sciences and humanities majors generally do not. Some have lower median mid career earnings than the starting earnings for CS and engineering. Other sources I am aware have similar results to below, such as Payscale.
Engineering & CS Majors
Chemical Engineering: $68k → $103k
Civil Engineering: $60k → $90k
Computer Engineering: $65k → $106k
Computer Science: $62k → $95k
Electrical Engineering: $65k → $100k
Mechanical Engineering: $63k → $98k
Social Sciences Majors
Economics: $55k → $90k
History: $36k → $66k (~half also have grad degree)
Political Science: $42k → $75k (~half also have grad degree)
Psychology: $34k → $56k (~half also have grad degree)
Sociology: $35k → $56k
Arts & Humanities Majors
English Language: $35k → $60k
Fine Arts: $33k → $55k
Foreign Language: $35k → $60k (~half also have grad degree)
Philosophy: $36k → $62k (majority also have grad degree)
Theology and Religion: $32k → $49k
They did use average rather than median earnings.
I just met a Computer Science major at Stanford, probably did pretty well in school, who received a starting salary of $170K+ with stock option of at least $30K per year and 401K matching option, with foods all free. Only cost seems to be the housing. On top of that, this kid went to college for free, with college covering the entire cost. On the other hand, my kid is one of those non-STEM kid who is really NOT good in math and computer science areas, so he won’t have a high paying job waiting for him after graduation. On top of that, our kid is a full pay student. Recently, he’s questioning whether he should have attended Stanford as a full pay, even if we could afford it. I told him it’s kinda too late, so he should enjoy learning as much as possible. lol However, I am telling him that that’s the fun and challenging part, and he should learn to embrace it. At least, he doesn’t owe any loans. lol
Even he says it’s funny how idealistic kids are while in college, but when they graduate, most of them go for jobs that offer them a lot of money, which indicates that the money talks louder than the idealism, i.e., he’s sort of questioning now whether the idealisms taught at school have any value when all is said and done, people choose the money route. I am telling him not to go for money but for satisfaction value. Of course, you could have both – and everyone wants both, it seems.
I guess it’s a sign that our kid is maturing and thinking about things. But I don’t have any easy answers.
Looks like an outlier, even among CS majors at Stanford, if post-graduation destinations and pay levels there are comparable to those of the other “big 4” schools for CS (those other 3 have relatively detailed career surveys by major).
@ucbalumnus I am not all that familiar with Stanford undergraduate starting salary, but at least for this company, the starting salary offered to Stanford graduates seems to be from $150K to $175K range with other benefits. Yes, it’s still competitive to get offers from this particular company.
This particular kid was quite admirable because he financially supports his parents who supported him. In some sense, computer programmers are like minor athletes who do not have long years of good salaries because it’s very intensive work.
By the way, I don’t know too many CS major kids, but all CS majors I know, they received good offers and don’t have to worry about money, whether they graduated from UCSD, MIT or Stanford.
I can foresee the day when colleges will pay certain Humanities and non-STEM majors money to attend their colleges because there will be so few Humanities majors. lol
Does he has to live in SF/SV? Salaries SHOULD be really high there, to cover the super-high housing cost.
@OHMomof2 He shares a housing with a fellow employee near his work place. Guy doesn’t even have a car since he gets around by other means. All he does is coding. He says he’s too tired from coding to work during weekends on his own venture projects. He only has to work M through Friday but he says he’s burned out. It appeared to me that unless you LOVE coding, it can be really grunt work. Of course, high paying grunt work. The kid was telling me that there is a premium on writing short, elegant coding, as opposed to lengthy ones, and that the company does not value just long hours of work. If you can produce short, elegant coding work, that’s more valued. I had a pang of regret, not sending my kid to a coding summer camp when he was young. lol
Some companies are known for having high entry level pay for new graduates in CS, so that is likely that new graduates in CS from anywhere would get comparable pay. But those companies may be very selective in their hiring standards, so the most selective colleges (or CS major programs) may be very overrepresented among the new graduates they hire, even if they recruit everywhere.
Professional athletes in some sports tend to have very short careers (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL average career lengths are all under 6 years, according to https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1109952-nfl-mlb-nhl-mls-nba-which-leagues-and-players-make-the-most-money ). But computing careers, though significantly longer than professional athlete careers, are often shorter than the ~40-45 years between college and what people think of as retirement age. This appears to be due to expectation in hiring that someone with 20+ years of experience in the technical side of the work needs to be very elite (as opposed to merely good) at the job or an in-demand specialty subarea. Note that this can resemble age discrimination, although it is not exactly the same (though actual age discrimination likely exists). Many people with 20+ years experience (age 40+) move into management or other roles where technical skills and knowledge are useful, but there is no need to be elite in them; there are relatively few individual contributors at that job-seniority level. (Would not be surprised if this were the case in many other kinds of jobs. Of course, organizations do not need that many managers, so that not everyone who wants to move into management can do so.)
Hence it would be a good idea for a new CS graduate with a highly paid entry level job do some financial planning to save up enough to be able to retire at age 40-50, even if retiring by then is not the intention. Having the ability to retire means that being forced out by then is not a financial disaster. It can also mean shifting to a different career is easier to do when needing money to pay tomorrow’s bills is not an issue.