How Much You're Going to Earn Based on Your Major #College

There has been quite a bit of discussion on Ithaka about the American education system and there was frequent agreement on the radical methods needed to improve it.  For example, college and high school are not the only types of schools in America and there needs to be better placement of kids in the most appropriate type of school such as trade schools, etc.  Hopefully such things will come about in the near future but we don't need any editorial on why they will or they won't.


This article is quite a bit more pragmatic about education since it's listing the salary to start and after ten years for any given major and they provide a lot of them.

Every college major available has been ranked

Researchers have worked out the highest paying majors in America for 2017-18, revealing them in a list of over 450 different courses.

Experts at Payscale have ranked every major in the nation based on how much you earn within five years of graduating (early career salary) and after 10 years of graduating (mid-career).

Good news for anyone studying Engineering of any kind – it makes up nine of the top 10 high-earning majors. Petroleum Engineering comes in at number one with a starting salary of almost $100,000. Here’s the top 10, ranked by early career pay.

The Tab:  This is how much you’re going to earn, based on your major


The Rockhouse interest is that the disparities in compensation for different majors look like about what you would expect for which ones pull the big bucks and which ones don't.  For a bit of whimsy, Cadillac Man, History and Anthropology start out reasonably well but the peak after ten years isn't too impressive and both do about the same.

Probably not surprising is that a degree in Arts doesn't start out well and doesn't build much at the peak.  That comes to another topic which has come up from time to time as to whether a college-education is required to teach job readiness in whatever field to have any real value.  The Rockhouse thinking is a college education is worth it for its own sake regardless of employability at the graduation.

There's no need to resolve which is better since it's a different strokes kind of thing and opinions will vary.


To have high confidence on the numbers in the report, investigating their credibility further is necessary.   Even so, there seems little reason for them to distort the truth of this type of report.  It may have some value to people who are younger and may not have seen such a salary breakdown previously.  The differences in salaries for each major may be illuminating.

Although classroom education is one of my last interests for my situation, reviewing the different majors was surprisingly interesting.

Here's a small sample:

Anthropology – $40,500 – $63,200

Apparel Merchandising – $42,200 – $70,800

Applied Computer Science – $53,100 – $88,800

Applied Mathematics – $57,600 – $113,200

Applied Physics – $56,900 – $102,500

Architectural Engineering – $61,200 – $95,100

Architectural Technology – $44,800 – $73,000

Architecture – $45,200 – $83,100

Art – $37,000 – $59,600

Art & Design – $39,000 – $66,200

Art History – $41,100 – $65,400

Athletic Training – $36,800 – $54,100

- Tab


Have a ball with it and make of it what you will.