College Rankings Based on Earnings and Debt by Major

[CU123]

@Data10

@CU123

I’m guessing the Union Institute data is so anomalous as to have a single data point backing it up.

Your guess would be incorrect. The database does not provide earnings information when sample size is very small. Union Institute had a federal tax reported earnings sample of 139 criminal justice management majors over the 2-year period, which was a statistically significant portion of the total CJM graduates. One clue about why the first year earnings are so high is the age of graduates. In the most recent IPEDS year, the age category with the largest representation was mid-career employees aged 40-49. Only 2 students at the entire college (all majors) were under 20. I expect those 2 traditionally aged underclassmen and others with little experience did not start out at 6-figure salaries.

The information is not useless, but one needs to consider the context when interpreting results.

Thanks for investigating, now we know the source of the anamalous data!