UCLA Salaries with You Tube video asking just-graduated students their starting pay

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Los Angeles
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Here’s a video by a YouTuber named Charlie Chang in which he interviewed some UCLA grads at the commencement ceremony about a week ago about their work plans and compensation. I’ll have some notes below the embedded video.

Notes:

  • There’s been a lot of talk on CC about the UCs, in particular UCLA, having lower starting salaries and lower salary measurements according to College Scorecard (as seen in the NY Times) than some of the upper-level CSUs. Here’s the salary data listed by major by year graduated that was recently updated at the UC website for each of its nine undergrad campuses. Here’s the salary data for all the CSUs.

    • The salary data for the UCs is presented in a three-medians-and-a-mean format and is for a very restricted set of majors with one catchall, and is listed individually for ~ 21 years. They went by a CIP code to attach these majors with gathered salary information based on these subclassifications for each undergrad campus.
    • The UC website gathered this data collected from the CA Employment Development Department, which encompasses those who derive a W-2 income as employees (within CA), as opposed to those who derive a 1099 Independent Contractor income, such as an entrepreneur like Mr. Chang or those who are employed by the federal government. (Poor wording, but too lazy to correct.)
    • The CSU website undoubtedly uses the EDD data also, but goes in greater detail with ability to filter by major(s), and includes a 2-year, 5-year, 10-year, and 15-year aggregate salary of [the] four measurements [(25th, 75th, 50th, percentiles and well as the mean)] for [each of] the CSU campuses.
    • I wanted to see how UCLA’s averages stacked up against the two highest- compensated CSU grads, Cal Poly SLO and California State University Maritime Academy, so I had to take UCLA’s salary by major and try to come up with an aggregate average for the grads at 2, 5, 10, and 15 years out of school, based on the percentage of each of the majors listed for the University.

  • The UCs, including especially UCLA, compared to SLO and Maritime, are usually slow starters but do well later on after grad professional school, etc.

  • Here are the definite figures for Maritime and SLO, and what I estimated for UCLA, using only means:

Mean Salary Comparison of UCLA, Cal Poly SLO, and CSU Maritime Aademy
UCLA CPSLO Maritime Academy
2 Years $59,000 -61,000 $70,780 $82,043
5 Years $90,000-92,000 $91,052 $94,525
10 Years $140,000-143,000 $119,735 $119079
15 Years $187,000-191,000 $146,610 $138,792
20 Years $224,000-228,000 N/A N/A

Notes on Spreadsheet:

  • So the essence is that UCLA undergrads when they graduate, start out lower, but end up higher than both of these CSUs because UCLA is more preprofessionally oriented, with much more going to grad school.

  • When trying to figure an aggregate salary for all the majors presented in 2, 5, 10 & 15 years post-graduation:

    • I elided Nursing from the calculations because there aren’t that many graduates/year;
    • I adjusted the Psychology departments % based on those who were listed as Psychology grads versus those as Psychobiology grads, adding %s to Biology grads – Psychobiology is one of the top premed majors at UCLA (but there are Psych grads who attend med school also);
    • In my calculations for the aggregate salaries for all years, I had a Catchall major of greater than 11%;
    • I increased the Mathematics majors to reflect an increase in Mathematics/Statistics in years 2 & 5;
    • And I reduced Sociology from the total Social Sciences percentages also for the earlier years to reflect the decrease in this major’s numbers.

  • There was a history major who said he might work at McDonald’s. He’ll have a very good future which will start out slow but end up well:

    • 2 Years, $48k
    • 5 Years, $77k
    • 10 Years, $120k
    • 15 Years, $159k

If I think of other things to write, I’ll add them later.

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Did they look by major ? I don’t know between UCLA and CPSLO but assuming UCLA had a higher liberal art percentage and less STEM this likely brings lower initial salaries. For 10 years later, do they account for who pursued further schooling vs who didn’t. UCLA (or the others) may or may not be the terminal school. And location of where the students live - are salaries adjusted for that ?

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Let me edit my response so that it makes better sense.

Yes they do, as per my notes. I didn’t print the salaries by major because it’s in the link, but you can filter for UCLA and look at their salaries by years out of school.

I just edited and included the history majors salaries at the 2, 5, 10, and 15 year intervals. These include grad school, presumably law school {for} History, Sociology, Polisci majors, and the CSU website does the same. {Edit III: Forgot that square brackets around individual words will have a stealthy effect on what’s included in it.}

[Although there are a lot UCLA grads whose professions don’t come close to what they studied as undergraduates, and it’s not restricted necessarily from, e.g., their being social-science majors and their gravitating, say to business school, or medical school, or even something like their being SWEs.]

For 10 years later, do they account for who pursued further schooling vs who didn’t. UCLA (or the others) may or may not be the terminal school.

Edit 2: No, both the terminal BA/BS grads and those who received grad degrees are mixed together. This is why you see a big jump in average salary by majors in the social sciences. This isn’t Payscale or some other service that does delineate {between the two sets of grads}. In fact, of course, UCLA is predominantly not not the terminal school, e.g., for the Bio majors, who attended medical, dental, pharmacy school. Additionally, most UCLA grads attend grad school.

And location of where the students live - are salaries adjusted for that ?

Edit 1: No the UC and CSU salary information are not adjusted for where they live. Sorry, yes, salaries are greatly affected by location with CA’s being pretty high. And UCB’s salaries are about $30k/year higher than UCLA’s because more of its grads work in the higher COL Bay.

4

Sorry, for the grammatical mistakes in my previous posts, which happens whenever I multitask.

I wanted to comment on Mr. Chang’s video as related to the 23 persons he interviewed which were:

  1. 5 STEM students – 3 Computer Science, 1 Applied Mathematics, and 1 student doubling in Statistics/Data Science and Linguistics/Computer Science;
  2. 3 Grad Students;
  3. 9 From the Economics department: with 7 Econ, and 2 Business Economics students – there might actually be more Bizecon students now or at least equal;
  4. 5 (Non-Econ) Social Science students;
  5. 1 Psychology student.

I won’t comment on the first three groups, the STEM, grad students, and the Economics-based students, because even for the one who’ll travel {and} find {gainful employment} later, their futures are set.

Groups four and five were comprised of six students.

The History major, who stated that he hasn’t started looking for a job just yet and said he might look at McDonald’s is fairly common {scenario} at UCLA and the UCs – not the McD part, {but more that the lower tuition & other costs for an in-state, if he is, lulls some into not interning and networking,} unlike Ivy grads who’ll strive to have offers post-graduation because they’ll need continuous income. Per the salaries listed above for this major at {2, 5, 10, 15, with the 20th year post-graduation being $185k}, he’ll have a good probability of very high compensation dependent on his motivation.

The group of grads the EDD-data doesn’t keep track of are those who’ll work as independent contractors. This person may end up in something like commercial real estate and blow everyone else out of the water with his income.

The thing to be leery of while working for oneself is the double FICA percentages that come with self-employment, a little over 15% up to the cap of $160k, as well as one having to send in quarterly tax payments to the IRS and Franchise Tax Board, because penalties will be incurred by not paying a steady stream.

The Public Affairs major who’ll be in consulting was very resourceful and planned things well with internships and clubs.

I’m guessing the Political Science student who’ll start out as a teacher will probably end up doing something else.

Both the Applied Linguistics and Sociology students stated that they will attend grad school and go for a teaching and counseling career, respectively, presumably to help their communities. I’m guessing both attended UCLA without paying any tuition. Here’s the breakdown of salaries for Soc students which is one of the lowest at UCLA in the years since graduation:

Sociology 25th %-ile Median 75th %-ile Mean
2 Years $29,748 $45,600 $61,188 $50,000
5 Years $46,652 $66,600 $89,342 $75,000
10 Years $63,972 $89,800 $127,592 $108,000
15 Years $71,657 $107,000 $153,201 $130,000
20 Years $74,631 $117,308 $172,308 $147,000

I’ll probably add one more post following this one in a similar spreadsheet presentation of the one right above for various majors to try to prove the aggregated salaries for the University.