The College Degrees With the Highest Starting Salaries

In the past couple of days, some topics we have been going over in our economics class, and specifically had a quiz about, include; positive statements and normative statements. Positive statements are based on facts that can be proven, while normative statements are based off opinions and talk about what 'should' be.

The article that I have chosen in relation to our recent studies, is called "The College Degrees With the Highest Starting Salaries" This article contains a national survey about the different types of college majors and average starting salaries after graduating. 

After analyzing different colleges, a national survey showed that more than half (53.6%) of new grads were jobless or underemployed

Graduates in some majors like petroleum engineering which is the top bachelor’s degree have a starting salary of $96,200

The next two highest-paying majors are also engineering degrees:  computer engineering at $70,300 and chemical engineering at $66,900.

As you can see, a high percentage of these majors are engineering majors aside from management and computer science.

We also looked at direct and opportunity costs.

Opportunity cost is related to this because people used the time to get the degree, pay to attend school, and graduate but were not pursuing their dream by getting employed in their desired position.

The same example is used from earlier, about a national survey which showed that more than half (53.6%) of new grads were jobless or underemployed

This is saying that these graduates from certain different majors are either not finding jobs at all, or not finding jobs in their chosen field.

There are obviously different reasons for this, such as new graduates not even being able to cope with reality. The students don’t understand that governments subsidize degrees, so there are more degrees than the world needs, or can accommodate. It basically screams out how arrogant some people can be, and they don’t realize that because you qualify for a job, doesn't mean you’ll get it. Some people can go hard-core in their studies, racking up 4.0 GPA’s but then when they graduate, they will go apply for that one job they always wanted with the $120,000/year to start, and they won’t even get responses from certain employers, and they will go into a state of disbelief and realize that all these years of studying, and paying thousands of dollars for a major went to waste. 

This is clearly a real-world example of opportunity cost that occurs daily because of poor decisions by arrogant people.

The direct cost in this example, is the idea of going to college and spending money on tuition fee's, textbooks, and the time invested into obtaining your degree.

*example provided in explanation*

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THE POTENTIAL SOLUTION

What they have to do is think, why, what, and how will I get this job. The people obviously have to do something more than just get good grades in university or college, because there will always be competition for jobs, especially the high paying ones. Obviously some employers prefer experience over education. One idea to get around that, is to have a part time job during your school and have something that relates to what you want in your future, so that when you are applying in a few years for a great job, your resume can consist of more than just a college degree, but also some gained experience while you were in school. This will definitely set sparks for certain employers, because you aren’t only either experience or education, you are a slight combination of both, and you will definitely have some more preference during the job hiring process.

I’m not trying to call out all those failed graduates that are currently underemployed, or I’m not trying to discourage them, and don’t get me wrong, it still pays to get a degree but what I’m saying is that they have to be educated about what happens after they obtain their degree. They have to know about how high the demand for hiring people in their specific field is. If it’s a low job demand for that particular field, than they obviously have to create plan b, and be prepared for the worst if plan a fails. They have to realize that there is always competition for jobs, and they need to prepare to be the best candidate. They need to be more open-minded for other jobs or some kind of related experiences in their desired field, or completely choose a different career which has a high demand for hiring people, and will give them an opportunity to try and start something new.

That picture really made me think about reality...

Some people will truly believe with all their heart that their ‘real-world’ experience and an advanced degree would make them very desirable to hire, and be very successful in the field they love. But after sending hundreds of resumes, and getting rejected from multiple employers after obtaining a master’s degree, you can really start to feel degraded and realize how that degree was a waste of time. They start to feel like a total failure, and you start to feel like you went too far down one path to turn back and start on a new one (especially when another degree would not guarantee anything), and overall, it becomes a very hard situation to deal with and obviously your self-esteem and hope for the future diminishes. People just have to be more patient and realistic with their goals and not overdo certain things because it will cost you money and time in which could have been used to pursue something even greater or more possible.

So just be realistic with yourself, have good judgement, and give yourself time to think about what you really want, and be sure to educate yourself about post-graduation opportunities in your desired field of work in the future. 

- Mati Jankowiak