Berkeley's salary potential compared to other state schools drops from 2nd to 5th

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>The ranking of UC Berkeley’s salary earning potential as compared to other U.S. state universities dropped from second place in 2010-11 to fifth place in a 2011-12 PayScale report released this week.</p>

<p>[UC</a> Berkeley drops in income potential report rankings | The Daily Californian](<a href=“http://www.dailycal.org/2012/02/24/uc-berkeley-drops-in-income-potential-report-rankings/]UC”>http://www.dailycal.org/2012/02/24/uc-berkeley-drops-in-income-potential-report-rankings/)</p>

2

<p>The top four are:</p>

<p>SUNY Maritime
Colorado School of Mines
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
New Jersey Institute of Technology</p>

3

<p>Well Berkeley offer a much wider range of programs than these specialized schools =P</p>

4

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<p>On top of that, two of those are colleges with at least a partial emphasis on Mining, which is currently experiencing a huge salary glut because the demand for labor vastly outweighs the supply of people willing to provide it.</p>

5

<p>I think y’all have missed the point: the key issue is not regarding Berkeley’s standing relative to other public (specialty engineering/mining/maritime) schools. Rather, the key issue is regarding Berkeley’s relative drop, compared to its own standing in the same ranking last year. </p>

<p>Put another way, you might argue that the top 4 schools in the ranking are all specialty schools. But those schools were also specialty schools last year, yet Berkeley nevertheless managed to beat 3 out of 4 of them last year. So why couldn’t Berkeley do the same this year?</p>

6

<p>Variation in entry-level job prospects between different majors could very well be the difference. Engineering (other than civil) and mining might have recovered better than other majors in entry-level job prospects in the current economy, for example.</p>

<p>Of course, this shows the mix of majors at each school can have a significant effect on the Payscale-reported comparison.</p>

7

<p>Nobody has ever disputed that the mix of majors contributes to Payscale-reported comparisons. That is obvious, or at least should be, and obvious statements are uninteresting. </p>

<p>What is interesting (if true) is the notion that engineering may have recovered faster than other majors did. First of all, we ought to investigate whether that’s even true at all. And if it is true, then we should investigate why it’s true - that is, why has engineering recovered faster than the other majors.</p>