Salary, College Degree | featured news

A new salary survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) shows that engineering majors dominate the list of college degrees that pay the highest salaries to new college graduates. Of the ten majors with the highest starting salaries, six are in some branch of engineering, including computer engineering, in the no. 1 slot at $70,400, chemical engineering, no. 2 at $66,400 and aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering, no. 4 at $64,000.  The no. 3 highest-paying major is computer science, at $64,400.

Efforts to disclose college degrees' earnings potential are picking up steam, holding higher education directly accountable for return on investments by families and taxpayers.

Want a solid, middle-class salary straight out of college? Skip the last two years. A site that analyzes state-level data of how much people earn a year after graduating college found some counterintuitive results: Certain students who earn associate’s degrees can get higher salaries than graduates of four-year programs —sometimes thousands of dollars more.