Put your money where your math is

There was a CNN Money article today about engineers topping the salary charts. For the sake of brevity, I will only list the top 3 salaries, as well as the last one in the list of 15 top-earning degrees. This should give you an idea of the spread.

1. Petroleum Engineering - $83k
2. Chemical Engineering - $65k
3. Mining Engineering - $64k
...
15. Construction Management - $53k

First thing that hit me - sticker shock. Wow, it sure pays to be in oil recovery.

Second thing that hit me - article said that people studying English, Communications, Social Work, or other similar social science and liberal arts disciples can expect an average offer of $29-35k. Wow, this is similar to what engineering grad students and post docs get paid.

The general idea of the article was that math skills are still in high demand and in short supply ("engineering and computer science each make up about 4% of all college graduates"). So score 1 for you engineers out there! (If you're reading this blog you might be interested in academia... Not the best get-rich-quick plan, fyi. Though I still think it's worth the trade-off.)