What Engineering Degree Makes the Most Money?
9 September 2006We’ve looked at the highest paying college majors in the past, and whether you can really get a good job with any major. Today CNN has an article on the college degrees that are most likely to be marketable for the next ten years or so. Anne Fisher of CNNMoney suggests that the best degree options these days are in engineering - jobs in those fields are being generated faster than colleges can fill them up, and the shortage of skilled workers is starting to increase salaries - to the point that many of the top recent graduates from places like MIT are making six figures straight out of college. The average pay for engineers overall in the U.S. has hit $72,965 - a big bump over what they’d been making for the last few years. But it also makes a big difference what kind of engineering you go into - because demand for specific types of engineers varies. She points to several specific fields where they’re making a lot more money than usual - for one, chemical engineering. One chemical engineer said:
“In my field, there is a 0.2% unemployment rate, and the petroleum industry will be needing 40,000 more engineers (mostly chemical engineers) over the next 10 years. You can write your own ticket in this field. Most of my colleagues are earning six figures.”
She also points to software engineers as making a ton of money - mainly because a lot less people are majoring in it. I’ll add that there is a lot of demand for lawyers with engineering degrees, too, so you don’t actually have to be an engineer. Patent attorneys pretty much have to have one, and many firms are looking for Phd’s.
If you’re not good enough at math to actually succeed in this major, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to run out and force yourself to do it anyway. Money isn’t everything, and if you don’t like your job it’s not going to make up for that. And if you don’t do well in your classes, you won’t even be getting that money - engineering is a notoriously hard degree to get, with few of the “easy A’s” that exist in liberal arts degrees. But if you are mathematically inclined, take advantage of it. Get a degree that’s going to earn you some money.
Discuss this in the Free the Drones Forums.
No comments yet