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Computer Engineering Degree Most Valuable
Anonymous Squonk writes "CNN reports on the National Association of Colleges and Employers quarterly salary survey. Computer Engineering degree holders once again command the highest starting salaries at an average of $53,117, but Chemical Engineering is gaining rapidly, and Computer Science graduate's salaries are up 8.9% over the year before. Most of the other geek disciplines rank high on the list as well." While starting salaries for some degrees are up, the overall situation is not very good - indeed, your salary may be decreasing.
How does this compare to the outsourcing to india?
What is the difference between Computer Engineering and Computer Science? I had always thought they were different names for the same subject. Does Engineering deal mostly with the hardware aspect?
at a Fortune 500, and I'm responsible for our campus recruiting program.
The majority of candidates we are seeking are those with Comp Sci degrees. To any kid entering college now, take my advice - go to Washington University in Saint Louis.
We're hired from universities all over Canada and the United States, and I can tell you that the quality of hires from Washington University is far beyond that of any other school, including Waterloo, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, etc.
Just one HR executives advice...
Or is it just me ?
The happenings at Matrox are a good example of great college grads from all the good schools with *ZERO* experience
Sunny Dubey
I find that most computer related degrees are "chasers." They mix well with other skills. They allow you to computerize something such as a medical thing, or an automotive thing, as you make a tool. Afterall, computers are only tools. What good is a tool without a purpose?
Well at least thats the way on the software side. I got my MSCE (oh yea, thats Masters of Science in Computer Engineering...) while working for an automotive Company. I have not changed fields and am probably not making nearly as much as I could. But I fear for job stability so I hang around.
Besides, we are adding more and more electronics to cars plus they are several automotive network technologies such as LIN, CAN, J1850, CCD, etc. Automotive field is not too bad a place for a CE.
Notwithstanding, our managers are also smoking The India Pipe(TM).
From what I recall - the college new hire salary for IBM computer engineers (B.S. degree) was ~$45-49k in 1999, $50-53k in 2001. Not sure what the current value is, though I'd expect it is in the $55k range.
MBA, MS degrees command different jobs and different salaries than what was on the survey.
The real shame is that the elementary ed teachers starting salary dropped significantly. These are people our society depends on, and it it very difficult to keep the best people for the job in there if they can get (and need) better paying work doing other jobs that don't require as much skill or talent.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
At my school (University of Utah), the primary difference between Computer Science and Computer Engineering was, you needed much better grades to get into Computer Science.
At the end of your freshman year, the top 70 students got to continue in CS, the rest have to switch to CE or EE or Art History or something. With about 200 students taking the freshman CS courses, you really had to bust ass to make the cut. Now I find out those slackers are making more than me? WTF!!!!
Geez to think of all the partying I could have done that year.
Yeah, but if the beginning salary is too low - are you willing to work there for five to ten years to make your way up to what you could/should have been making when you were hired?
I'm in this exact case. I keep hearing, "you'll be rewarded down the road" and "if we're around in five or ten years, you'll have a great position because you'll have been here from the beginning." I'd rather be making a "competitive" salary now instead of hoping to get enough raises over the years to equal what I could find elsewhere.
Me first. Company second. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.
5-10 years down the road, unless we do something about it, there won't be programmers in the US anymore. If there are, we will have to be working for $5 an hour to compete with the people from Russia/Ethiopia/China/etc... We need to fix this now by removing free trade crap and saving our IT industry before it is completely gone. Fools like Bush and most CEOs don't seem to get the fact that once they've killed off the IT industry, our economy will be far too gone to save anymore.
And don't think any job is safe. What is to stop the hospitals from bringing in doctors from India using the same H1-B program that is decimating the Computer Science industry. No one may like when Habib operates on them, but it will help keep costs down.
Already feeling it on this one. I graduated in Decemeber with an Information Systems degree and am having little to no success on the job hunt. Nobody is hiring anybody straight of college as all of the jobs that are publically posted are requiring people with 3-5 years or so of working experience. What's that leave a newly graduated person like me to do? I've had professors and other people I've networked with try to hook me up, but the best I've come up with, and consequently accepted, is a temporary position for an indefinite amount administering Windows 2003 Servers and coding in VB.NET!
Of course I'm happy to find that much since it will provide that oh so valuable working experience that hardly no college graduates have. Unfortunately, most college graduates may not recieve any opportunity to gather a strong working experience and may have to turn to some other discipline.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Local jobs are not going over seas. It's the big boys that are sending jobs away, not the local Mom & Pop companies. Concentrate on those and you'll do fine. Here's all you need: Be a native born English speaking American that has a college degree and several years experience in IT. That's it.
Show the local companies how you can provide fast, high-quality service and support 24/7 and they'll pay dearly to secure your services.
Some dude or chick sitting in a cube in Bombay can't help me when 1. Their English sucks 2. I just lost a HDD from mechanical failure. My frustration level will be sky-high from having to deal with these clowns so I'd be thrilled to see a local engineer who clearly understands what I'm saying and who can be a local presence to fix these everyday IT problems. I'd pay him more too because I actually see what I'm paying for.
The moral of this story: Don't work for IBM, HP, Dell or any other mega-IT company because your job will go to India or Pakistan or China. Develop local business contacts and you'll make a killing... I do. Hell, I took several classes in PR (Public Relations) just to sharpen up my business proposals. It's a no-brainer.
Computer Engineering degree holders once again command the highest starting salaries at an average of $53,117
Here in the Midwestern US, the starting salary for a retail pharmacist is more than $80,000. Surely it's even more in other parts of the country where the cost of living is so much higher.
I wonder why they aren't included in the survey.
It's easier to wear the spandex than to do the crunches. --David Lee Roth
and I say that it's one of the most difficult engineering curriculums out there. I've had to take a lot of math (multi-variable calculus and differential calculus), a good bunch of science (physics, chemistry; 2 semesters worth), and a nice broad range of engineering courses like Linear Systems and Microcontrollers and many more. If a job expects you to use all of this in the workplace, $53k is well-deserved.
I've seen countless people that started out next to me change majors to another engineering discipline, Computer Science, IT and even Education. I wouldn't be a senior in Computer Engineering if I didn't really enjoy the field, and I think that people that dropped out just didn't have the CE mojo.
Also, a little off-topic, I heard today that in 5 years, the baby boomers are going to start retiring, leaving those entering the workplace a lot of jobs. Also, for every 2 jobs opened up by the baby boomers, there will only be 1 person to fill it.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
sounds like the situation i was in...
I was a temp for 2.5 years, 2 of which i was doing the same job i am now (so i wasnt being moved around or such) and pretty much being my own boss (me and an intern were pretty much running the dept, he was there for ~2 yrs). when they finally hired us, it was pretty much an insult. sure, more than what we were making at the time, and we finally got benefits; but it was not a substantial pay raise. and no bonus or any thanks for staying around for so long during 'tough' times or anything.
in other words, dont get you're hopes up. then again, your field is probably completely different than mine, so i could be wrong.
my advice: keep looking for work elsewhere. take what you can get when you can get it. i feel like i wasted almost 3 years of my life being a temp, while doing the work of a full-timer.
The dollar figures on these "average starting salaries" need to be taken with a shakerful of salt. In many parts of the country, a Comp Sci degress and 15 years of experience still won't get you $48,656. I spent most of last year job hunting, so I have some idea of what people in various industries around here (W.Mich.) are paying. And it's not just that I'm unqualified for any of the good jobs; I'm also counting the jobs I didn't even get interviewed for. Only a few of the jobs I applied for even broke $40K.
Maybe it's just that good in the US, because holy crap that's a high average starting salary. Here in the UK the current average computing starting wage (based on my own experience and that of my friends) is something like 20k GBP (37k USD). I have a high-pass degree in Computer Science from a well respected university, but with the current computing job climate it would be seriously hard to get a job paying more than 25k GBP (46k USD) as a starting wage. (Hell, I'm not even on that much yet - far from it!)
It's extremely annoying, given that mechanics and plumbers (or even totally unskilled jobs like shunting boxes around a warehouse, which I did for a year or so a while back) can earn you almost as much as it's possible to earn with a degree these days.
The value of degrees has been reduced due to the UK government's insane scheme to get more and more people to go to university. We don't need more people to go to university - we need to make it harder to go to university so that only the people who really want to do it (and have the skills) can go, rather than lowering the difficulty of getting a degree so that the people who loaf it through university can also get degrees. It should be HARD to get a degree - I'm not saying it was easy, but I think it could have been harder. A degree should mean something, but these days I'm not sure it really does, because "everyone has one".
My youger brother decided not to go to university, and is an apprentice quantity surveyor in the building trade. He's a very intelligent guy, but it's just not worth him getting a degree. In five years time, I will be absolutely unsurprised to hear that he's earning considerably more than me (which he almost certainly will be).
Degrees aren't all they're cracked up to be, and the "extra" money you earn for having one barely covers the cost of going to university for four years in the first place.
I'm glad I have a degree, but it's not the big money earner it's cracked up to be - jobs are just too scarce at the moment. Personally, I blame the people who did computing degrees around the time of the dot com boom because they needed a degree and heard it was "where the money was". Now, there's a surplus of computer qualified people around, meaning that plenty of us who are actually really enjoy computers and are good at what we do can't get jobs because the gold-rush crowd are still hanging around.
Organic free-range music... yum!
...dont teach your students that they will get a 60,000.00 a year job...
You wounder why they out source to india and such...
Mabye just Mabye it's the fact that everyone whos jobs are being outsourced are looking for a starting salary of 60,000 and will not accept lower.
I have one job i make 25,000
I started at 20,000
And yes im in the Comp Sci industry
Sure, but when your family doesn't have the resources to pay $150,000+ to send you to college, you end up getting straddled with crushing debt.
Even at low interest rates, supporting a debt load that high for an undergraduate degree is lunacy.
And there is no guarantee that not going to college will leave you behind and going to college guarantees success. I know a girl who was a "bad girl" in high school and dropped out in 11th grade... she now owns 2 bars at age 23 and bought a $250k house with cash. I also know plenty of stoner dopes with master's degrees, $250k+ college debt who work at Starbucks or Wal-Mart
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
You don't mind being shot at? If not, Haliburton is offering 80-100k (tax exempt) for their positions in Iraq:
From this article.
At my school U of MD at College Park, computer engineering is usually considered the hardest major in the school, followed by EE, and then CS. The irony is that you'll ask a CS major if he could hack EE, and he'd almost certainly say "HELL NO!", and if you asked the EE whether he could do CS, he'd respond the same way.
Neither engineering nor CS have any sort of GPA requirements. If you can keep your head above water, they'll keep you. Naturally, GPAs are lower because the classes are harder.
The reason CE is considered so hard is that they hit you with the hardest CS courses (Operating Systems comes to mind) and you get more than a bit of EE (which, of course, is not trivial either). CS and EE afford you the luxury of only having to know EE or CS, not both (well, except for a bit of cross-training, not enough to impress anyone).
However, don't confuse this with "CEs can program better than CS majors at UMCP". They can't. Their knowledge of more esoteric languages like Lisp and Prolog ends up suffering in the process, and they're missing out on quite a bit of algorithm theory.
I'm a CS/Econ double major, and it's like accounting and economics. Yes, I've taken a massive amount of statistics and finance courses, but that doesn't mean I'd be the better accountant of a guy with a business degree in finance. Ditto for CE and CS - he's got harder courses, but it doesn't make him a better programmer, because I've got more of them where it counts.
In other words, the two majors aren't at all the same, and the idea of using CEs as the "better" cheap labor for coding isn't thought-out very well. (No, this isn't in response to the parent, but it's something I needed to say). I have no interest in being some kind of lowly code slave, which is why I got the Econ degree, too.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Anyhow, there's no one solution for each person in my mind. Whether you at your job or some other guy at another job would benefit from collective bargaining (e.g. joining a union) is a decision best made by the individual. Then there's the professional organizations like the Programmers Guild as well. But it's obvious to me that SOME type of professional organization is needed - I mean every other profession, except maybe McDonalds workers, have some type of professional organization, be it a union or more like the AMA/ADA/ABA. And our bosses sure as hell have Chamber of Commerce like guys in Washington DC making sure H1-Bs visa caps rise, or at least are not lowered and things like this. The ITAA is the main association that does this, Microsoft, Intel, IBM and so forth give them millions a year to mostly screw IT workers in Washington DC. Plus they have a PR department that gets news media articles written that said there was a massive shortage of IT workers in the late 1990's and H1-B visas needed to be raised. In fact that's a standard line they are paid to push like tobacco lobbyists who say smoking is not bad for you, these people are still saying there's a shortage or will be soon, they always say that, they're paid to say that.
Finally I should point out that there is a lot of corporate funding for organizations like the IEEE, USENIX (SAGE), ACM and so forth. In some respects it's kind of ridiculous, it would be like having HMO's pay for and to some extent control the AMA. But anyhow, if you're in these organizations it's good to talk to other people and educate and agitate about it, but there has been internal politic problems in the past, and while doing some of that is good, you should also keep in mind that there are avenues and organizations available to you outside of them, like the Programmers Guild and other organizations. And if you don't like any of them, and know others who are dissatisfied, you can always start your own organization, web site, whatever.
To be fair, Nurses do get paid considerably more as they progress in the field. A Bachelor's is not typically the end of their education.
The starting salary for teachers is also a bit misleading. At most places it is structured so they get substantial pay increases in those first few years, the years they are most likely to drop teaching. This is bolstered by their unions which wish to reward seniority beyond anything else such as quality.
t
Sorry but this just isn't so on the Depressions having started because of "Trade Wars." The famous "Smoot-Hawley" Tariff which was supposed by those who argue this trash to have caused the Depression of the 1930's starting per Wall Street Oct 29, 1929 has a problem.
"For a complete myth, it is astounding how much this one gets repeated. Sharp observers have probably already noticed there is a problem with dates. The stock market crashed in October, 1929, but Hoover did not sign the tariff into law until June 17, 1930. So more sophisticated conservatives have refined the story: the tariff turned an otherwise ordinary recession into a full-blown depression. But even this is a gross exaggeration, and top economists reject it out of hand. Peter Temin, an economic historian at MIT, told The Wall Street Journal on February 22, 1996 that this historical revisionism is "wrong," according to the consensus of the nation's most respected economists. Paul Krugman, one of the world's top international trade economists, and one who is expected to win a Nobel Prize for his revolutionary theories in favor of free trade, calls the Smoot-Hawley theory "incredible." "
Quoted from http://mirrors.korpios.org/resurgent/SmootHawley.h tm
You have to believe in TIME TRAVEL to believe in that crap!
What is more the argument is entirely ignorant of the facts! We are in a "Trade War." One Government is placing a tariff on the goods and services of America causing them to have to be marked up about 150% while all other parties pay no such taxes. This Government is the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT and it is doing so encouraged by fools who claim that trade deals such as NAFTA and GATT which set up this condition are good for trade. Frankly they are wiping American Trade from the whole world! In addition they are driving the entire world into a depression and have set up much of the cause conditions that have us in the "War on Terror" as these desperate people around the world are finding US Trade Policies are collapsing their economies while causing them to have to pay US Costs of Living. I know! I saw this in 1996 in the Philippines and came back knowing a war was coming from what I saw there.
Regards to the speculation on democracy failing I noted some time back that as people got more and more ignorant of reality they might just legislate farming out of business because it was dirty. Shockingly they have done worse and your arguments are what did it! They have quite literally legislated making a profit in the USA to be ILLEGAL! Right now if you earn for your employer more than 2.5 Times the cost of freight to import your product or service he makes a profit by Exporting your JOB because of thes ignorant trade deals. That has made it illegal for an American to actually earn money for his employer
Regards the Political Fallout on Steel Tariffs and the EU, these IGNORANT Deals violated the most basic provision of the US Constitution which was that all States must give Full faith and Credit to the Rulings of other States. The GATT through the WTO was given the right to overrule State and Federal Laws. The WTO power arises from this. It violates the very basis of free trade in that no person wanting free trade can expect that he sets the rules for all sides of that trade. That local laws are to be respected. The fact of local laws being respected does not mean that they should not apply to all parties trading locally as with the GATT this principal does not exist.
The reality is I am for FREE TRADE! I love my Free Trade with other US States. If you back Free trade tell those who want it to JOIN THE UNION!
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
People have to pay off their student loans. In this case, especially, when considering student loans remember TANSTAAFL.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
These 'trade laws' you are referring to are hardly agreed upon that simply. Sure there is back and forth in regard to tariffs vs. free trade (like NAFTA and the Canadian/American free trade agreement), however just as often a nation with unilaterally increase its protectionist tariffs to prevent foreign competition if its own industry is struggling or can't compete on a fair playing field.
This is the way it is in China, the US has no real say in what tariffs that China imposes on imported goods, but obviously the Chinese government in this situation has chosen to protect its local industry from foreign competition by forcing the competitions prices for their citizens through the roof.
The same applies even to the Canadian/American agreement (see softwood lumber, and grain disputes). The American government has repeatedly placed huge tariffs on Canadian goods (currently over 25% on grain, and upwards of 50% on lumber) because the American companies can't compete with Canadian producers. However in this case with a WTO binding free trade agreement, this is illegal. Which is in fact, why we have been to court on 13 different occasions to have these tariffs repealed (and won, every time).
This is not a sig.
Any position in the oil patch will start you at more than 40K per year. I am currently working as an MWD hand for a service company and should make about 90K this year, and yes I do have a degree, but can't afford to take a desk job and use my degree with a 40% pay cut. Also my last directional driller made 150K last year working in Canada, with 5 years experience and a grade 8 education.
That's fallacious reasoning (or just an excuse to brag). If you're not making the median salary of a high-school graduate, what makes you think you would have been making the median salary of a new college graduate?
(if they are good and commited)
That's the key though isn't it? I had lots of teachers who were on cruise control, putting in their 30 hours of classroom work per week, getting the students to mark each other's papers, reusing lesson plans from when they were young and idealistic.
That's where having a union hurts overall. Those same teachers were the ones who had the most seniority, so got paid the most, and were impossible to get rid of.
Being a fantastic teacher doesn't earn you any more money, and doesn't ensure more job security, so what's the incentive? The young teachers who put in 60 hour weeks tend to figure this out eventually.
That's not to say that all older teachers are jaded and lazy - I had lots of great experienced teachers too, but clearly they weren't in it for the money, and would probably have been doing it if they were being paid peanuts (what do you know - they were getting paid peanuts)
As a Computer Science degree holder working in IS, it's nice to know that I'm well below the average for the IS field. Uh, I guess. And I'm even more below the average for Computer Science degrees, of course. What's worse is that they redefined the job description during the interview phase to make it an hourly position...
What I think would be more useful would be to report the average salary for a particular area. Although I know that I am making less than the national average, the cost of living here is also less than say, California, where the starting salary of course needs to be higher. I think I am probably making around the average for this geographical area, but I sure would love to see some hard data on that.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
(sarcasm)You're just lazy(/sarcasm)
At least that is what I am told when I tell people that I have to take data entry or telemarketing jobs to make ends meet.
Teachers salaries won't be increased much in our lifetimes (we have wacky priorities) and it doesn't matter.
A lot of this can be blamed on the oddness of the priorities of teaching unions.
Their preference is to have start teacher's pay very low, and then make marginal increases until year 10 or year 15, at which point huge increases will occur. (At least, this is what happens at many large urban systems, like here in Columbus.)
So a teacher may start out at $25k-$30k (an ok amount of money for the great lakes region) but with twenty years teaching experience (and a masters) could be making $75k.
Which is regrettable for many reasons, there are few really great teachers making that amount of money. Many who make that kind of cash have just stuck around long enough, get to work ontime, and don't molest anyone.
I guess that applies to many other jobs too, but teaching is not a job you can suddenly decide you want to go into...the rigamarole makes the DMV look like a trip to the sweets shop.