New tool shows students earning potential for different college majors

Student Lounge College Life
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<p><a href="http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2014/02/03/new-tool-shows-students-earning-potential-for-different-college-majors/article%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2014/02/03/new-tool-shows-students-earning-potential-for-different-college-majors/article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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Iowa Student Loan – a West Des Moines-based higher ed lender – has a new online tool for helping students determine the earnings potential for college majors and career paths, knowledge aimed at helping them better manage their finances and debt.</p>

<p>The tool, called the ROCI (return on college investment) Reality Check, allows students to see the jobs that might result from the major they intend to pursue, as well as the probability of getting that job, the starting salary, growth in the field and the percentage of graduates in the major who have the job.</p>

<p>A student pursuing a computer engineering major, for example, would learn that 7.8 percent of graduates in the major get jobs as computer programmers with starting salaries at more than $53,000.</p>

<p>That starting salary, according to ROCI, doubles as the recommended maximum for student-loan borrowing during college.</p>

<p>Officials with Iowa Student Loan announced ROCI in a press conference on Monday with Gov. Terry Branstad. It’s one of several online tools the lender offers to educate students before they take out loans.</p>

<p>Branstad has been highlighting his administration’s college-affordability efforts this year as he campaigns for another term.

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<p>Very interesting tool for Iowa residents, or any college student if taken with a grain of salt.` Though I'll admit it's depressing to see all my favorite subjects with low starting salaries in irrelevant jobs.</p>

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<p>Sigh. I hate things like this.</p>

<p>I majored in psychology in college, a poster child for the common “useless major” trope. First of all, I suspect that the starting salary is wrong. They say that the starting salary is in the 15th percentile of available salaries for each job. But just for the first one, they claim that the starting salary for “counselors” (a very broad category that requires a master’s degree) is $24,000; the 10th percentile in that job is $25,000, so…</p>

<p>They also claim that elementary and middle school teachers begin at $30,000 (it’s closer to $40,000) and that psychologists begin at $27,000 (psychologists are doctorally-prepared and probably start at around $60-70,000). You also can’t be an elementary or middle school teacher with a BA in psychology; you need a BA in either elementary education or in a subject area taught in the middle grades.</p>

<p>They also say physicians and surgeons start at around $55,000, which is ludicrous, unless you’re counting residency I suppose. Also, somehow being a physician is not closely related with the study of the mind, brain, and human behavior. Apparently neither is being a management analyst or a marketing manager, even though management, marketing, and sales are basically just applied psychology. But being a kindergarten teacher is? Many of the jobs they list don’t even require a bachelor’s degree.</p>

<p>So then I became very curious and looked up math, which is a major that can be widely applied to a variety of careers. They have postsecondary teachers (as in professors) with a starting salary of $18,000. What? anyway, some of the top jobs that popped up are actually computer science jobs that require a decent amount of CS knowledge, like programmer and systems analyst (not that you can’t do it with math degree, but you also need the right computer classes). But actuary was on page two - behind “other teachers and instructors” (what does that mean?!). What else was also on page two were retail supervisors, clergy, bookkeepers, secretaries, and cashiers…but no no statistician, no bioinformaticist, no epidemiologist, no financial analyst or market research analyst or economist or public policy analyst. Operations research analyst was on page three, BEHIND retail supervisors and secretaries.</p>

<p>I think this should be taken with the whole shaker.</p>

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<p><em>Yawn</em> </p>

<p>Next. </p>