WSJ:Grads With Technical Majors Earn More Than Those with Liberal Arts Degrees

<p>Engineering</a>, Computer Science Pay More Than Liberal Arts - WSJ.com</p>

<p>Excerpt:</p>

<p>"The pay advantage of graduates with technical degrees often persists throughout their careers, said Fort Collins, Colo.-based career counselor Katy Piotrowski. Although liberal arts majors have a wide range of salaries, Ms. Piotrowski said that mid-career liberal arts majors she works with in northern Colorado make between $60,000 and $70,000. Those with technical degrees make at least $10,000 more.</p>

<p>Technical majors even have an advantage in fields that are typically hotbeds for liberal arts majors, she said. "Technical degrees are valued in all fields. I've a seen a [company] communications department actually prefer that someone have an engineering degree rather than a communications degree," she said.</p>

<p>In the study, among the highest-paying liberal arts majors in the study was economics, at $42,000.</p>

<p>The most successful liberal arts majors either go to grad school or begin to develop their career through internships while still in school, Ms. Brooks said."</p>

<p>Slow news day?</p>

<p>^^ My thoughts exactly.</p>

<p>Huh? Most here seem to claim liberal arts grads do just as well and that may be false and they are behind the curve for life. Now you want it both ways?</p>

<p>"Most here seem to claim liberal arts grads do just as well "</p>

<p>I think in fact the claim is that liberal arts grads are NOT unemployable, doomed to work at McD’s, doomed to a life of poverty, better off not going to college at all, etc, etc.</p>

<p>The quoted data would seem to confirm that. an average mid career salary of 65k vs 75k? I mean if the person got to study what they wanted, and to do what they wanted, it may be a worthwhile tradeoff. Its certainly not the contrast between the ‘solid life’ and living in a garret thats sometimes claimed.</p>

<p>Also of course, it does not show that any given LA major would be better off getting a tech degree. Its quite possible folks interested in LA, with less inclination and/or talent in tech fields, might not average 75k in tech fields.</p>

<p>Some of the trades make bank. I had a part time job doing data entry for a utilities company and one of my jobs was inputting salary changes. Never discourage your kid from becoming an eletrician or linesman, those are some good jobs! And they had great benefits at that company, too.</p>

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<p>I would agree if LA majors got to do what they wanted, or at least what they studied, with any regularity. For many LA majors the only jobs out there in their field of study is to go on and get a PhD and become a professor. If you get a bachelors in Engineering or Computer Science chances are excellent you can find some sort of job as an engineer or programmer if that is what you want. But if you major in say Classics or Philosophy there are very few real jobs out there reading/analyzing ancient Latin literature or thinking deep thoughts. Aside from the few that go the grad school/academic route, many if not most LA majors have go to law school or business school or get some sort of other job in business unrelated to their major. </p>

<p>Spending your undergrad days reading and analyzing Italian Renaissance poetry is a wonderful thought and will not necessarily doom you to a life of unemployment, but it may mean you have retool after graduation and try to get a job in the Marketing or HR department of some company. Students should go into those LA fields with eyes open to the fact that there are very few jobs out there even remotely related to their majors.</p>

<p>"But if you major in say Classics or Philosophy there are very few real jobs out there reading/analyzing ancient Latin literature or thinking deep thoughts. Aside from the few that go the grad school/academic route, many if not most LA majors have go to law school or business school or get some sort of other job in business unrelated to their major. "</p>

<p>of course classics and philosophy are hardly the only LA majors. </p>

<p>When did liberal arts come to mean the humanities only? </p>

<p>And of course even within the humanities, probably the most common major is English, and there are lots of editing/PR/communications type jobs that are at least loosely related to “english”.</p>

<p>It’s silly and insulting to suggest that every liberal arts major will have to “retool after graduation and try to get a job in the Marketing or HR department of some company”.</p>

<p>Many of the liberal arts majors I knew went to law school or business school and did much, much better, money-wise and power-wise, than the science/tech people. The head of my firm was a Spanish major in college. One of my roommates was a History of Art major; he’s spent his career as a real estate developer, and he has the best darn art collection I have ever seen for a person who didn’t inherit a bunch of his money. A friend from my major had, for a bit, one of the hottest restaurants in this city; she now owns and runs a very successful high-end catering company with her husband. Other friends include an English major who seems to support herself as a respected right-wing intellectual, a studio-art major who went to medical school and practices medicine in a romantic location, a psych major who is a founding partner of a successful market-research firm, and a bunch of successful journalists/authors. </p>

<p>My sister, for that matter, was a Spanish major who never went to graduate school at all. She is an investment advisor, makes a ginormous amount of money year after year, and regularly pontificates on CNBC or in the pages of Barron’s.</p>

<p>My spouse double-majored in psychology and American Studies; she has never worked in the for-profit sector, but has been all over the place with nonprofits and government, and has very, very impressive credentials. She can’t buy and sell small countries, but she sure didn’t cap out at $65K mid-career, and she has done EXACTLY what she wanted for pretty much her entire career.</p>

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<p>Nowhere did I say that <em>every</em> LA major will have to retool. In fact, I gave examples of some that wouldn’t.</p>

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<p>Right, which is exactly why I specifically mentioned law school and business school in my post as examples of the retooling into other fields that LA majors commonly have to do to get a good job. In fact, with possible exception of your Psych major friend who runs a market research firm, all the examples you list are LA people who retooled into careers <em>other</em> than their major - which was exactly my point. Your list of friends typifies exactly what I was saying - LA grads can have careers but it usually won’t be very related to their major.</p>

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<p>Not everyone thinks of it as “retooling.” My D1 hasn’t yet declared a major but she’s thinking of majoring in political science and minoring in economics. She thinks of it not as “retooling” but as valuable “preparation” for law school, though she’s open to other career options if they emerge. The idea that liberal arts are a dead-end track is silly and just wrong. These fields teach people valuable skills, concepts, and ways of thinking that may be applicable in a wide variety of fields. Philosophy and classics are particularly excellent preparation for law school; people who major in those fields tend to do extremely well in law school, medical school, or business school admissions, in their professional studies, and in their subsequent professional careers, perhaps in part because these are fields that naturally tend to attract many of the best and brightest students (as measured by median SAT scores, surveys of IQ scores, and other indicators), but also, many believe, because the rigorous analytical thinking required to excel in these fields is excellent training for subsequent professional pursuits, whether in the law, in medicine, or in business.</p>

<p>So,
What do you do with a DS with very good academic and work accomplishments but is working half-time/half-pay and spending the remainder on hobbies in art and outdoors?</p>

<p>^ I would be proud that he can support himself working half-time and that he is apparently satisfied with his life.</p>

<p>I am confused about why we are even debating this… I don’t believe there are many (any?) on this forum who would state that it is ON AVERAGE financially more lucrative to major in liberal arts than a technical major. I also think we would probably all agree that SOME liberal arts majors will go on to achieve significant financial success.</p>

<p>Of course there are other reasons to pursue a liberal arts degree besides money. But I don’t think too many people out here dispute the WSJ’s financial analysis.</p>

<p>Of course not. But practically no one is “average”, so average has little meaning to anyone.</p>

<p>To coureur’s point – I suppose there are some tech majors out there who have gotten a job straight out of college directly related to their majors, and gone on to have great careers without any major retooling. But I haven’t met anyone like that. The science/tech majors I know ALL did significant graduate work, or retooled themselves (sometimes repeatedly), or in many cases both.</p>

<p>I might suggest that one of the things that drives some (not all) kids into tech majors is a desire for material success, and that that factor alone probably accounts for a good deal of the difference in subsequent material success between the two groups of majors. One group has a number of members who have already shown a willingness to adjust their behaviors in order to make more money; the other group has few or no such people. Doesn’t it stand to reason that the first group is going to have higher average earnings? On average, they want it more.</p>

<p>I like the way there is a separate bar in the graph for civil engineers. I guess that makes the other group un-civil engineers.</p>

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<p>Contradiction in terms.</p>

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<p>I agree, and I have yet to see anyone making that argument on this thread. If anybody makes that argument I’ll join you in disagreeing with them. But in the mean time, what I said was this:</p>

<p>“Students should go into those LA fields with eyes open to the fact that there are very few jobs out there even remotely related to their majors.” </p>

<p>…and I stand by that.</p>

<p>It’s a question of hopes or expectations. If you hope or expect to get a job after college actually <em>doing</em> what you majored in, then most of the liberal arts are going to be a disappointment for you. If, on the other hand, you are majoring in liberal arts to prepare for law school or business school and do not care about ever actually being paid for doing something related to Art History or Anthroplogy, or whatever else you spent the last four years studying, then great - you are on the right track.</p>

<p>And this is in sharp contrast to fields like Engineering, Computer Science, Accounting, Chemistry, or Education where graduates can and do actually get jobs in their chosen fields. Whether they choose stay in their fields or retool into other careers or even go to law or business school is up to them, but at least they usually had a choice.</p>

<p>I’m just bummed that we’ve turned into a society where you go to college to learn some skill for a job. I have friends who are artists and novelists and poets who are boom and bust and have Ivy Leagues and highly selective college degrees who have extremely fulfilling and happy lives. I have a friend who worked and in her forties turned around went back to school and has a completely new career now. I have a friend who is an exceptional musician (BA from famous music college) who gets called everytime a renowned jazz musician is in the area to “sit in” and this person is a CEO in a smoke stack industry. I could go on and on. Yup we were all liberal arts kids. Thank goodness I have those friends because it gives me the ability to have blinders on with regard to what my kids study in college.</p>

<p>Subject to some financial constraints (need to eat, raise kids, etc.), doing well in life is not solely about money (as is obvious to many). Those who chose the tech track probably choose higher mean but lower variance. Those who choose the LA track probably choose higher variance, lower mean. There too, it makes a difference where the kids go to school. My hypothesis is that LA kids from high-end schools have tended to have higher-paying jobs than kids with engineering degrees from those schools but that relative income is a lot less likely to be the case at significantly lower-ranked schools. Rightly or wrongly, employers are probably willing to bet more on the raw horsepower and initiative of English majors from Williams or Princeton than from Indiana State or Sussquehana. That bet may or may not be correct, but I suspect that it is being made regularly. </p>

<p>Anecdotal evidence: the lowest earning of my Ivy roomies/buddies is the engineer who earns less than the English major who became a Fortune 500 CEO, the sociology major who is a law school dean, the English major who is a doctor/head of department at a med school), the psych major who is a doctor, and the English (history?) major who is runs a non-profit, and the math/stat major who runs a consulting firm. So, although income itself is not the right measuring stick, even there, at the high end, I think one doesn’t have to worry about ambitious kids’ majors. I think the worry probably comes lower down in the league tables. Does that sound right?</p>

<p>I’d like my kids to learn some ways to think and some skills, but especially to learn how to learn, because our world will continue changing and probably the most important skill is to be flexible enough to be able to adapt to the changes. If my kids wanted to major in political science or philosophy, I’d be OK with that. Unlikely, thought. ShawSon would find both interesting but wouldn’t be able to sustain the reading/writing required and ShawD likes more systematic, cut-and-dried (not the right description, but clear mechanisms that one learns) learning like biology or neuroscience.</p>