<p>Why isn’t Michigan on there? They have the salary information for engineering students and based off of those we should make that list.</p>
<p>People write about “STEM majors” as if they are all the same in job and career prospects (whether they are claiming or assuming that they are good or bad). Reality is that there is considerable variation, with biology and chemistry at the worse end of job and career prospects (note that biology is an extremely popular major overall). The job and career prospects of other STEM majors that have better job and career prospects on average tend to depend a lot on industry specific and general economic cycles. In the current economy, job and career prospects for any graduate in any major are worse than they were during better economic times.</p>
<p>Regarding those payscale.com pay averages, they do not tell too much, since the mix of majors can vary considerably by school. In some schools, biology is an extremely popular major, and those numerous biology graduates drag down the school-average pay numbers for graduates. Unfortunately, only a few schools provide employment placement and pay averages for graduates by major.</p>
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<p>Hey, I resemble that remark :-)</p>
<p>Coming from Podunk, Purdue, and Cajun State U, the blue blood schools give an advantage in hiring and a smaller one in advancing, but if one can’t do the job or has no passion for it (and in many STEM areas passion is what it takes, not connections) they’ll be unemployed like everyone else.</p>
<p>Try to get a job in a skill-specific position, and you can have your Harvard STEM degree gilded and printed in Unicorn skin (sheepskin is so 1990’s) but if you don’t know VB .NET with Foundation 4.0 and yada yada, the Anthropology kid from Podunk with a minor in Comp Tech will get it.</p>
<p>Few companies hire on credentials and potential alone, especially in STEM.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, and anecdotal stories aren’t worth much, my son graduated in June with a math degree. He didn’t bother looking for a job before graduation. He went to a strong liberal arts college and did well there. He got all kinds of interviews though, mainly at software companies and Wall Street type places that use quantitative trading strategies. By July he had a couple of offers in hand with attractive salaries. </p>
<p>I don’t know about the STE majors, but I was impressed at how attractive his math major was to employers.</p>