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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.
Wow, that starting salary must be appreciated by all 5 graduates who were able to find jobs.
Honestly, until something is seriously done by the government and companies (determing a percentage that can be offshored, completely redoing the tariffs in the so-called "free trade" agreements, etc.), it's difficult to make a case for going to a college or university. To train for what? Everyone behind a desk is vulnerable to being offshored.
Thankfully, Lou Dobb's program is putting the spotlight on this issue each evening! Tonight, he's going to focus on the companies who are the worst abusers of offshoring. Last night, he focused on the owner of a Tool and Die shop who is complaining that "free trade" has ruined his business and it's about to go under. His specific complaints were that tariffs on his stuff going to China is 29.9%. Stuff coming from China to the US has a tariff of 3%. In Mexico, they freely use and dump chemicals that he would go to jail for dumping. This is free trade? Our elected officials agreed to this? Holy cow! The playing field is not level or even close to being level.
Until the tariffs are equal and labor/enviromental issues are equal with our trade partners, America is going to continue to lose jobs, companies, and wealth. Our future is slowly being flushed down the porcelin convenience. Our own beloved industry - IT - has near double-digit unemployment. Good luck to new graduates trying to enter.
I'd rather know about the money I'll be making five to ten years into the job. If the company has starting salaries too high, chances are they aren't going to be around that long.
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Yeah, but she has a masters versus a regular batchelor of science, or what have you. Most psychology majors I know have very low paying jobs with social services.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
You're probably right. We'll always need doctors in every town because people get sick and need to get better. But we won't always need software creators in town because the townspeople don't actually NEED them there -- the software engineering process can take place anywhere and still meet the requirements.
How does this compare to the outsourcing to india?
When I started college over 4 years ago, the average salary of a grad (from my school, for my degree) was over $60,000/year.
When I graduated last year, it dropped below $40,000, and it was extremely difficult to find a job. I have a friend with the same computer related degree with a 3.92/4.0 gpa who still hasn't found a job yet. And yes, I know that gpa doesn't always equate to ability/productivity, but this guy is really good.
I'm glad to see that things are back on the upswing for technology, even if this is just a start.
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...
This comes as a bit of a revelation to me. I sat and compared these figures to to my school (Georgia Tech's) published figures on average offer granted to graduates in each field, and Tech comes out consistently about 4-5 thousand higher than these figures.
If you're an out of state student.. like me.. this gets eaten up by extra loans quickly, but if you're fortunate enough to be in-state this can probably be a real help.
The sad(der) part is that nursing and elementary teaching are in the bottom five of the list with both of them going down.
Nurses and Teachers are the people who should be paid better. Oh well.
Free XBox, PS2
Lots of money is great, but what about the people who have a love for computing?... To me as long as I am happy with my work, the people I work with and I dont have to worry about where my next meal comes from then thats all the beans. If youve noticed, a lot of people are getting into the field JUST for the money, I'd like to see maybe 5-10 years down the road all the high money chasers go and the people who actually WANT to do this type of work stick.
The title "Computer Engineering" can mean so many things, though.
I know it was all about the internal computers from microwaves, stereos, etc. where I went to school. CE people had a very good combination of IT, CS, and various microprocessor-related engineering skills.
What does it mean to you?
One thing to remember is that salaries are very region dependent, so a Computer Engineering degree may not command the highest starting salaries in your region.
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
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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."
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.
"You're never going to get rich working to make someone else rich."
This was told to me while I was working as a software engineer commanding a decent salary. But I wasn't making the real money. That job belonged to my boss, who saw it fit to pay me a skim from his profit for a job I performed.
What was I to do? Whine? Talk about how "greedy" he was? Criticize him for his lack of technical skills (compared to mine)?
All of that is excrement. Instead, I chose to become an entrepreneur. I found partners, made deals, and now am in the process of opening my second restaurant as well as selling things over television and Internet. I think about business all the time, and work suddenly has become very, very fun. Life itself feels like a massively multiplayer game.
Oh, and here's another piece of advice that I learned that I wish someone had told me earlier: Anyone will loan you any some of money as long as they are convinced that it's in their best interest to do so.
Stop working for someone else. Find partners. Find investors. Find a way that you can make a business work. It's exhilirating and fascinating. And you won't go back once you are free.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
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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.
Here's a similar chart from the American Institute of Physics (Fall 2003). They give a range of typical salaries for each degree type, which is an important fact - ChemE students earned 50-55k, while students with a Physics BS pulled in a much larger range, from about 32-52k.
Interesting to note that secondary school teachers seem to have the least opportunity salary-wise (as far as that chart shows); not only is their salary low, but they're locked in to the narrowest range, from about 27-32k.
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.
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.
>Me first. Company second.
Put this on top of every resume you send out.
How delusional is the alternative now?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
the shortage is that there are not enough jobs for all the certificate and nothing else holders. Are they really IT/DP/CS professionals?
The company I work for has hired a few people in the last year. First requirement on every position BS in something, usually BSCS (CSEE doesn't exist much around here, so they only cover it under "related fields").
So, the job market is recovering slowly, and we are in no danger of outsourcing even job 1 here.
Wow, that's amazing, because I recently returned from a career fair here at Caltech, and nearly every job needed a heavy programming background. The problem (for you) is, that they want other skills too.
Your REAL problem is that an increasing number of students majoring in physics, chemistry, math, etc have learned to program pretty damned well. That gives us a huge advantage - we can take a job that uses either our science knowledge, programming skills, or more likely both. Companies get somebody with a wider range of skills.
As such, I think the best idea is a major in the physical sciences or better yet, EE, with a CS minor (or double major).
I guarantee you this - if you had an EE/CS double major, or even EE major/CS minor, you'd be beating companies away with a stick. Particularly here in California.
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!
I recently transferred from a Computer Engineering program into Computer Science for a couple of reasons. Computer Engineering seems to be much more oriented around getting people ready for cubicle work on team projects, alot of emphasis goes into group work and labs. However the subject matter covered in my second year computer engineering courses was quite questionable in terms of how much computer education you get with the degree. I would say, at least at my school, the engineering programs are sold as highly structured, rigorous and competitive programs. The biggest problem I had with computer engineering was the subject coverage, we were in 90% of the electrical engineering courses, including electromagnetics. You work hard for the degree taking harder *base* knowledge courses but get less involved in specialized areas. Computer science, at least where I go to school (Queen's University, in ontario), seems to be a much more involving program that deals with alot of in-depth material that actually covers the wider spectrum of the computer world.
To sum it up, *in my opinion*, Computer Science covers the theory to application process and is closely tied to the real world of Computing, whereas Computer Engineering gives you a broad view of the possibilities while crunching through alot of busy work to "build character". When I added up the pros and cons of transferring I was almost in tears of joy to learn that playing with the linux kernel, tinkering with OpenGL were courses, and not distractions as such activities were in computer eng. Then again, I am a person who benifits exponentially from applying knowledge and not just memorizing and reading till the cows come home.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
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.
So 35% of them get in? And you're complaining that you have to bust ass? Wow.
The Engineering program at the U of Alberta has a common first year, with usually around 750 students. about 30% of the fail out of engineering altogether, and only the top 15 get into the coveted Engineering Physics program. Another 30 get into Chem E: Computer Process Control, from there, the rest of the programs fill up. Never more than 120 students per program. If you wanted something other than Civ E, Mec E, or EE, busting ass didn't even begin to describe it.
a companies best interest is to pay you the absolute bare minimum that it takes to keep you around, and not a dime more.
you need to negotiatie up front for the best compensation possible. all future raises will be based on that going forward.
... hi bingo
Me first. Company second. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.
Putting yourself first isn't always about salary. Young engineers should be more concerned with the technology that they are learning and less about salary. Ultimately, engineering skills are a commodity. If you take the opportunity to develop unique and desirable skills, you will make more money over the long haul than someone with more common skills that chose projects on the basis of salary. You will also be more employable in difficult times. That's how you get rewarded down the road.
I can honestly say that I've always chosen the job that was more technically exciting or seemed like a big long term payoff because it was a risky challenge instead of short term financial gain. I've gotten screwed a few times when companies failed and the sure thing at a better salary would have netted more. But I look back without any regrets because I was always enjoying what I did.
Being a recent CS graduate from a large State university, and currently working in data entry I wish all of you better luck than I have had. The competition, at least here is insane. I had 18 interviews last year and was passed up on them all. Worked at an italian restaraunt for a few months, now am doing data entry for about half what I spent on my college tuition. Though, I have a few friends that have become very successful with their degrees. The key to their advancement, they all worked networking jobs throughout college, I didn't. Thus the experience is lacking on my resume. I wish all those seeking CS or engineering degrees the best of luck, and get as much experience as you can. For those that do find jobs are doing very well for themselves.
Isn't McDonald's a Fortune 500 company?
Do you want fries with that?
And for someone who claims to be making over 100,000 a year, I find it odd that you can't buy your software but instead resort to warez (first picture right hand side).
Tsk tsk tsk...
I took a job for slightly less than average, because I knew the company, and it was a fun job and all. Better yet, they were established and had been around for along time. Well 5 years and a new CEO latter the company decides the project that was critical to the future of the company is worthless and gets rid of our entire division. The company itself is still around and making money. The product...
Don't fall for the 10 years down the road line, they won't pay you more. Truth is you get two chances to get more wages, when you start, and when you threaten to leave. It is dangerious to use the second one, they may call your bluff, and even if they don't they are likely to look for your replacement because of it. So you start out a little more, with the promise that you will get rasies... Well guess what, the guy who didn't fall for that line and started at 10,000 more than you also gets rasies. And current salery isn't taken into account until you reach the top of your pay scale, at which time they consider promoting you. If you two do = work, you both get a 4% raise, but he is getting 4% of a larger number! Then when he hits the top of the current position scale (sooner than you, remember the position scale is also going up every year!) he gets promoted even though you both are doing essentially the same work.
At best, this statistic only tells us where the US economy was, not where it is. I don't put much stock in tallies like this because it's like answering 42 to life the universe and everything.
Let's take a longer perspective, shall we? The computer industry has been white hot for many years now. Those of you who were working in it were riding that wave for a long time. Good work!
It couldn't last forever. Those wonderful salaries were not reflected in other parts of the industry. For the experience and training most Computer Science graduates have, an appropriate salary ought to be much closer to what most other engineers earn. That's why so many jobs are evaporating. We'll get them back eventually, at salaries more in line with what the rest of the engineering world is earning.
That's the way business works. The demand was white hot for nearly a decade. Now it's only red hot. It was a good wave while it lasted. Business Revolutions like that come along maybe once or twice per century. Be thankful you had the chance to ride this one.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
That's hurting more than any existing tariffs. While China's taking advantage of free markets, they're not playing by the rules. I'm all for free trade and I hate protectionism, but China's currency policy needs to go.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Linux/BSD/etc are rapidly addressing this, but not fast enough.
Thinking outside my Head
If your resume and cover letter were written in a similar fashion, I am not surprised.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Well, I hate to say it here, 'cause I know I'll get flamed more for who originally said it rather than what was said...Rush Limbaugh once made the statement that the fairest and simplest trade agreement with any country is simply, "We'll charge you what you charge us." If China's adding 29.9% to the cost of our goods, we do it to theirs. It's fair, it's equitible and anyone who complains is just told, "Fine, lower your tariffs, ours go down automatically."
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
I graduated from GT as a CompE in Dec 2001 and got a job in Austin, TX starting at more than the $53k average. Every one of my friends got a job paying close to the average. There were a lot of higher paying jobs, but they were in cities with a much high cost of living. It doesn't surprise me that $53k is the average, but take it with a grain of salt because $60k in Northern California is more like $35-40k in other parts of the country.
-- Adam
I have been involved in hiring at the last three companies (all software related) that I worked for. Your resume would not have made the cut. Get someone professional to go over your resume. It needs to be cleaner, clearer, and it needs more content.
A lot of people don't realize that its not what they know or dont know that is keeping them from getting a job. Its the fact that they have really bad resumes.
Pocket PC Games
I'm beginning to notice a pattern here. slashdotters seem to think that IT == programmer. which is WRONG! sure programming is part of IT but a very small part. Those computer science degrees could be used very well to obtain an entry level job in help desk ot junior sysadmin at a large company. getting a job as a programmer with no real world experience is like a convicted child molester applying at the FBI. get your ass in the door first, fine tune your skill for a couple years _THEN_ go look for a programming job. you need portfolio's and verifiable experience under your belt.
I personally have been in IT for around 8-9 years, well before the dotcom boom. and I've never been out of work for more than 4 months at a stretch especially now that I've moved over to networking and process automation. I have yet to see a qualified network technician stay out of work for very long. the market is there, stop trying to skate your way in @ $50,000 a year coding web pages. get your asses in the trench and do it like the rest of us did. work your way up. a couple years of hard work won't kill ya, and it always pays off in the end. there is an IT market out there and plenty of jobs but without experience you might as well compare it to an etheopian child looking at pictures of a royal feast, i.e. you ain't ever gonna get it.
A year ago I found a software engineering job at a small defense contractor in the northeast. What enabled me to get the job was leg work. While most of my friends complained about the job market, I sent out resumes and tapped every resource I had. What stopped them from getting jobs was their perception of the market. I know too many people who gave up on the job search without sending out more than a few resumes. Some went to graduate school or settled on low paying temp jobs. Provided one is flexible about the location and does his homework ,the jobs are out there. I say work at a good small defense contractor. The work is stimulating, well funded, and cannot be outsourced.
You can thank the teachers unions who make sure that starting teachers get paid squat while teachers who've been there a while, regardless of performance, make well above the industry median for someone with their education and experience - at least that's true in the state of Washington. Your state may vary.
If starting teachers salaries went up, the teachers wouldn't have anything to back up those extra taxes they keep asking for.
Mmmm.. Donuts
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?
Think of it as a degree in Computer Science, with a minor in Digital EE, and with the majority of your humanities electives replaced with science or engineering electives. This is how it was, at least, where I took my degree.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Your post betrays a poor understanding of psychology, game theory and human nature. In a trade where your productivity is a direct function of the number of hours on the job, such as flipping burgers and slinging lattes, it's approximately true, expecially as you can at least hope to make some of it up in tips for having a good attitude. In a trade where productivity varies wildly, such as computer programming, and is a direct function of ability and motivation, it's vital to keep people motivated. Which is why good employers tend to pay 20% over the going rate, and issue share options. 20% is a small price to pay for 50% extra productivity.
Tony.
-- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- Juvenal
Averages are just that, the average, not the minimum. Also, the min and max vary a whole lot when you take a national average. Why? Because cost of living varies a whole lot. There are plenty of places where 35k is fine. I live in one of them, Tucson Arizona. On 35k you could easily afford to own a 1500+ square foot house, a deceant car, and have enough left over for some goodies.
Now of course in the bay area, 35k is practally poverty, you'd be sharing an apartment, maybe even a room, with someone just to make ends meet. So, all things being equal, the same job will pay more there.
Basic economics dude.
Or the opposite. Mine was practically a major in EE (emphasis in digital circuits, VLSI, and HDLs) with a minor in CS. Really the major had enough flexibility that you could go either way.
That's part of what was so cool about it. We had way more choices than the other engineers. If I decided I didn't like hardware, while I'd still need the core digital circuits, etc., I could have taken, say, compilers, AI, etc. instead of VLSI and system design stuff.
That said, I emphasized in hardware and am now a software engineer. Go figure. But I do firmware, so it ain't so bad. And the hw background is a major help.
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.
So lets look at this from a logic point of view. I'm going to try to validate your argument through use of formal logic. As a refresher, an argument is valid when, if all the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.
So let's translate the first premise:
To think if I only made $53k out of college, I'd be taking a 50% paycut. (O, P)
That's:
O > P (this notation means if O then P)
Now the conclusion:
Good thing I didn't waste my time and energy on a useless college education. (W, C)
C > W Conclusion (If I go to college, I was time)
Now, there's an implied premise: If I went to college, I'd be making straight out of school money. (C, O)
C > 0
Okay, now let's look at the truth table:
O P W C O > P C > O C > W
1) F F F F
2) F F F T F F
3) F F T F
4) F F T T
5) F T F F
6) F T F T F F
7) F T T F
8) F T T T
9) T F F F
10) T F F T F T F
11) T F T F
12) T F T T
13) T T F F
14) T T F T T T F
15) T T T F
16) T T T T
Oops! It appears that line 14 has a false conclusion but has all true premises. This means the logic is invalid. Roughly translated, this say that you can go to college, make out of school money, *AND* have it not be a waste. Gee, who would have thunk it.
Now, if you had added the premise that the only reason to go to school is not make more money then you'd have a technically valid argument. However, I would you and I would still disagree that the only reason to go to school is to make more money. In other words, having a valid argument doesn't mean the premises are true, just that the line of reasoning beginning with the premises is good.
Now, I might suggest that going to school might help you either articulate your arguments better or realize that money is not the only reason why you'd want to learn. Maybe that's a set of life-skills that would be useful for you.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Well alot of huge engineering places will offer you up these massive starting salaries to entice fresh outs. However its often basically a ruse and you have no opportunity for advancment and your job security is questionable. I graduated with all my friends 2 years ago with a comp-eng/ee degree. They all started making 55k right off the bat at the big defense companies, woohoo. I started out at 45k in a much different place. (I went through ALOT of soul searching trying to decide what would be the better option). Now im making 55k and guess what, so are they. I have my next raise in promotion in site already and they are realizing now that their job sucks. When youre in your interview, put the guys on the coals. What is the promotion potential? How long did it take you to get promoted mr interviewer? Don't settle for a one sentence answer like "you'll be rewarded down the road" because thats BS posturing. Get numbers. Get dates. Get specific accomplishments. The place that can give you those things is a good place to work, otherwise youre basically going to las vegas.
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.