The counterintuitive side of engineering

sakky
Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:58:56 +0000

Harvard grad’s earning power is higher than both MIT and Caltech. Harvard is view much more as a LAC than a tech school. So why the salary difference?



Uh, no it’s not. At least, not to *start/i.

For example, in 2007, at the height of the economic boom, Harvard male graduates made a median salary of ~$60k, whereas female graduates made $50k. In contrast the average salary coming out of MIT, averaged over both genders, was about $62k. (Yes, averages and medians are not entirely comparable, but the bottom line is that there is no evidence that MIT graduates made less than Harvard graduates in terms of starting salary.)

[?07 Men Make More | News | The Harvard Crimson](’07 Men Make More | News | The Harvard Crimson)

http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation07.pdf

The explanation seems to be obvious - MIT graduates plenty of high-paid tech-oriented students, whereas Harvard, for all its investment banking and consulting prowess, nevertheless still graduates many low-paying humanities majors. Granted, many of them take low-paying jobs by choice - i.e., if you’re a trust fund millionaire, you probably feel no compunction to take the highest paying job you can find - but that doesn’t detract from the core issue that the average/median Harvard graduate is not as well paid as the average/median MIT graduate.