It’s What You Study In College - Not Where You Study That Determines Earnings After Graduation

From E21, "For Most College Students, It’s What You Study—Not Where You Study" by Preston Cooper:

[H]ow much students earn after graduating college—where a student goes matters far less than what she chooses to study.

That is one of the principal takeaways from the updated College Scorecard, a federal dataset that reveals how much students at thousands of colleges and universities can expect to earn in their first year after graduation. Critically, the earnings data are now broken down by program of study, so prospective students can compare the earnings of, say, a history major and an engineering major who graduated from the same school. Not every program has data available, but statistics are mostly complete for the large public universities that enroll most of the nation’s undergraduates.

It is probably no surprise that majors like engineering, computer science, and nursing out-earn majors such as history, psychology, and English literature in the job market. At the University of Maryland-College Park, for instance, a history major can expect to earn just $29,000 in her first year after graduation, while a civil-engineering major at the same school has a median starting salary of nearly $65,000.

Source: E21