I’m a Petroleum Engineering student at TTU. Since you asked about the only two majors at the top of the starting salary chart, I’ll make the right assumption you are taking a practical approach to a degree. From that perspective:</p>
<p>The only absolutely right answer to what career will pay the most next year, when you graduate, in 10 years, in 20 is this: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW. PERIOD.</p>
<p>The labor market is EXACTLY THAT: A MARKET. Playing the labor market is the exact same thing as playing the stock market. Except that to buy stock is the cost you’ve paid on graduation day. Opportunity, financial, personal, etc.</p>
<p>Now, with that in mind, do the stocks that are peaking today look like lucrative investments? Depends. But remember, the degrees that are paying a lot right now attract huge supply. If the demand doesn’t stay the same relative to the new supply the salary goes down (in general.)</p>
<p>That is what’s happening right now with PetE. Salaries are being driven down by the huge numbers of people, just like you, that read somewhere it had the highest paying starting salary and rushed into the degree. According to NACE, last year the average was 96K. This year it is 74K, a 20% drop. The BLS revised it’s growth prediction for the career downwards from last year. Next year? BUT, that all depends on how the supply and demand flux from year to year. Let’s say that by the time you graduate PetE pays the average engineering salary. Looking at it from that perspective; same pay, but…dirty work, little choice of geographical location, locations generally suck, impossible to raise a family, always away from home, no job security (see 70’s layoffs), huge responsibilities and stress, the chance (however small) that your degree will become completely meaningless at any time ( peak oil/ alternative energy, etc.) because if that happens your degree is so specialized that you can’t work any other job. Still sound like a good career? For 150k, the risks are worth it, but at 75K it’s a huge waste. Especially considering that in the oil industry truckers with criminal records and 2 weeks of training make 100k a year.</p>
<p>To answer your question you need to be able to predict how the supply of students and the demand for students is going to look when you graduate. That is much, much harder than you might think. There are huge sums of money at play here for both the industry and the universities. ANY information that you or I can obtain is almost guaranteed to be biased if not downright misinformation.</p>
<p>So back to my original claim: impossible to know. You are playing the market, so do research, be discerning about the information you obtain, and roll the dice. Anytime you choose a career that’s “hot” you are risking going into a bubble. It’s all a gamble, in the end, and if someone knows for sure what’s going to happen next year they sure as hell aren’t going to tell anyone else.