Bad data leads to bad decisions. Other than a politician, C-level executive at a public company and others whose compensation is a matter of public record, even if the data were presented in a common format, you’ve got a host of garbage numbers thrown together. Add to this the enormously misleading impact that one or two big earners can have if nobody else in their cohort reports their salary- well, you’ve got a lot of people not realizing that they are basing their decisions and borrowing on an outlier, not something relevant to them or their kid.
Knowing the raw numbers of kids working at different companies is also misleading. You can get a job at Google as an administrative temp- is that the same as being a computer scientist? You can get a job at Morgan Stanley processing 401K statements at a data center… how many parents then assume that the finance degree from University of New Hampshire is “just as good” as a BS from Wharton (whose kids also get jobs at Morgan Stanley)?? Salary differentials get “explained away”- a job in Manhattan of course pays more than a job in Salt Lake city or Orlando or wherever the data center is. But the processing job leads to more administrative work, vs. the Manhattan job leads to an actual career in finance.
Etc.
More data? There’s tons out there already and it doesn’t seem like people use any of it when making decisions. What rational person would help their kid borrow $150K for a degree from a private U in recreational management? Or choose the private university for a degree in real estate management vs. the public flagship for a degree in urban planning??? And yet people do, and it ain’t for lack of data!!!
Re-read blossom’s post 28 and try to get into the mindset. A kid isn’t limited simply because he picks the “wrong” major. (You don’t line up at career services, wait your turn, and get the next open job offer based on major.)
You quote a 980 and admit he isn’t headed for Brown or any college that’s selective or higher.
That kid’s limitations may be because, from the get-go, his drives are different, his own views and thinking are narrower, and the bar he set for himself is not going to take him far from where he is today. You can show him accounting majors can make more than elementary ed majors (or that accounting majors from College 1 make more than from College 2) – but that doesn’t mean he won’t end up at the local HR Block. Or parking cars.
Imo, the awakening he needs (and all our kids need) is that he, himself, has to pick up the pieces and make something of himself and his education. The kid has to have the vision and drive, the ability recognize what it takes.
Suppose your kid is a 1980. Same issue. Same advice.
The wildcard is that many kids do choose careers not related to their majors- that shouldn’t be so hard to understand. We can give myriad examples of how it will throw off some ‘salary by major’ chart.
@lookingforward "You quote a 980 and admit he isn’t headed for Brown or any college that’s selective or higher.
That kid’s limitations may be because, from the get-go, his drives are different, his own views and thinking are narrower, and the bar he set for himself is not going to take him far from where he is today. You can show him accounting majors can make more than elementary ed majors (or that accounting majors from College 1 make more than from College 2) – but that doesn’t mean he won’t end up at the local HR Block. Or parking cars."
I meant 980 out of 1600. not 2400. 980 is basically a 50th percentile kid. Just the average high school student.
I understand that this hypothetical students story may not end well, but it is possible. Maybe the student needs guidance, has never been challenged, and has some abilities that have not been developed due to circumstances.
Think more broadly than a cc:er. CC:ers don't understand why telling this kid that a business major from Michigan makes a bit more than one from Michigan State. I understand that this is not very important information.
I am more interested in this student having information about the for-profit college that is sending him mailings about a major in cinematography. He is unlikely to end up with a job doing that professionally at all. He should know that attending directional state U in one of many majors would give him a better much better chance to improve his situation and his families situation.
I realize that better information is no guarantee, but if more information improves outcomes for some students it would be valuable. In addition to helping students, It would also help the entire economy to the extent that there is better alignment between skills needed and skills available.
I’m not going to wade into the debate here, but merely point out that the data Much2learn is seeking does exist for several states so what he is advocating is possible and may be available for more states in the future. Here’s a link to the site.
The issue of the for-profit school and their metrics/deliverables is a different issue IMHO. There is no question that the “pay us your Pell and we’ll give you a bogus degree” schools need much more oversight and transparency.
But what parent (even if a 17 year old kid is naive) doesn’t already have REAMS of data which show- conclusively- that special ed teachers make less than cardiologists. Even if the cardiologist works for the CDC advising on public health strategies for heart disease; even if the cardiologist takes two months a year to volunteer with Doctors Without Borders.
To me, knowing what different fields pay (and most of this data already exists) is far more helpful than parsing the difference between U Michigan and Michigan State. And folks routinely ignore the salary information- again, not because they are stupid, but because for their kid it just doesn’t matter. Their kid isn’t going to become a cardiologist. So trying to dig through the data to learn whether Indiana’s degree in Hospitality Management is a better “value” than NYU’s… good luck with that. Too much noise in the data. Too much bad data and too few grads reporting accurate numbers. And way too many folks working in senior roles in the hospitality industry who studied Renaissance History or Spanish Literature or Supply Chain management to make any of the data which IS accurate relevant.
Some things appear to be much less obvious to students and parents posting here. How about:
students who dream of writing computer games, so they want to major in computer game design?
students who dream of working in the business of a professional sports team, so they want to major in sports management?
students and parents who assume that all STEM majors have good job and pay prospects?
Actually, much of this is not about major X at school A versus school B. It is about whether major X has the commonly assumed good job and pay prospects associated with the major that may be more commonly assumed than is actually warranted.
For example, comparing biology graduates’ outcomes across different schools may not be that accurate for various reasons. But looking at many schools’ surveys does indicate a general trend that biology graduates are not as highly paid as what one may assume if one believes that “all STEM majors have good job and pay prospects”.
UCB- but again- what parent has the luxury of pushing the kid into the high paying fields? How does this help the parents of the kid with a solid B average at a typical HS who has never gotten better than a B in a non-honors math class to somehow learn that Computer Science pays better than early childhood education?
Even assuming the data were “clean” (which it isn’t) and even if it didn’t suffer from every statistical problem in the book (which it would- self-reporting and all that), kids aren’t malleable pieces of clay. A kid who has hated math throughout HS isn’t going to magically morph into an employable data scientist just because prospects in that field are better than those in another field.
And even it he or she could do that morphing- isn’t that information already available from multiple sources? You need net ANOTHER set of statistics and government-regulated reporting mandate to conclusively prove that social workers make less money than oral surgeons?
The “commonly assumed” good job and pay prospects are usually urban legend. So like UFO sightings- ask yourself, “who is the source”. When the national association of petroleum engineers comes out with a study touting the high salaries of petroleum engineers- but you just read on the front page of the Washington Post that BP and Exxon are laying off X % of their engineers- who do you believe?
Again, this turns to jobs. Sure, you need to train in game design, not French, build the right assets. And maybe you can say to your kid, sorry, think about minoring in French, if you love it, not majoring, if you want a job in GD.
Then you go off looking for a good program. And if you’re savvy, you’re looking at the profs and their mentoring, courses, the equipment, the level of peers, hands-on and intern opps, etc. Not just what happens after the degree, not judging the program by the seeming number of kids who got large salaries. Treat this lightly enough and you could be surprised the ones with the higher salaries actually went after completely different career paths.
Where you do parse the difference in schools is where some may have a higher ongoing bar, profs and peers who stretch you, a higher level of opportunity. That’s not Mich vs MSU. It’s either vs the local cc or tier 250 college.
We’ve got two ‘not well known outside the region’ state schools near me that happen to have superb art programs. Many fine professional artists are grads. They’re good choices for your artsy kid. Guess what? A lot of dabblers major in art there, too. They went off to who knows what. You really want to judge these two art programs by a salary average?
“We’ve got two ‘not well known outside the region’ state schools near me that happen to have superb art programs. Many fine professional artists are grads. They’re good choices for your artsy kid. Guess what? A lot of dabblers major in art there, too. They went off to who knows what. You really want to judge these two art programs by a salary average?”
It could be by percent employed as artists, percent employed in positions requiring a degree, and middle 50% of salaries. The details of what would be informative, could be worked out.
I think that except for the most talented artists, the data could suggest that considering an additional major could be worth considering for some students.
@Much2learn (and anyone else who agrees with the OP’s position): Do you have any data about the actual size of the problem we’re talking about? The non-elite colleges with which I am familiar barely have things like English majors or sociology majors. Their English departments exist primarily to teach freshmen basic reading and writing skills; they don’t have Sociology departments. I believe that the number of PE majors who don’t understand that they are training for low-paid jobs as teachers or coaches approaches 0. There’s a substantial problem with trade schools – often, but not always, for-profit – telling kids they will get qualified for jobs that don’t exist in sufficient numbers or for which the school’s certification is inadequate, but that’s not the same as telling kids that computer science majors generally have better immediate employment prospects than women’s studies majors.
It seems to me that what you are proposing is a very imprecise, misleading solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist to the point of requiring a solution.
The typical adult can’t even read the service contract on a new refrigerator at Home Depot and understand what the $129 pays for. And now they’re going to take a crack at a massive data dump to figure out the middle 50% of salaries for an art major and whether or not it applies to their kid?
For sure- collect the data. For sure- make it widely available, and make all this salary stuff highly transparent.
But don’t kid yourself that you are actually helping the families who need the help. There will still be parents going into debt for marginal programs with marginal outcomes for kids who may or may not be suited for the career they are training for. And the cost of data collection (born by the college?) and the cost of a compliance officer or two to verify the data (born by the college?) and the cost of a bi-annual audit (born by the college?) either comes from the taxpayers or the colleges themselves.
You want better outcomes? Invest in education, not data collection and compliance.
I should write a manifesto- “Don’t go into debt for any career that your kid knows almost nothing about”. And that includes Occupational Therapy (I know a bunch of ex-OT’s- they sure hated the field once they got employed), Nursing, Event Management, Real Estate Development, and K-12 education, i.e. the so-called “guaranteed employment” fields.
We’ve outlawed slavery with an amendment to the constitution. You just can’t force your kid to work as a nurse once your kid discovers that he or she hates nursing. Knowing that nurses can earn six figures in some big cities in the US doesn’t make your kid love nursing. And the kid who can barely pass his/her classes- let alone the boards- is going to make a TERRIBLE nurse.
I agree that the parents should not be forcing the student to a specific major, but posts on these forums indicate that many parents actually do or try to do that, despite student lack of interest. Even worse is pushing or forcing based on false assumptions, like “all STEM majors have good job prospects all the time”.
However, would you say that it is better for a student to have no idea at all what the job prospects may be like when choosing a college and major? Especially when false assumptions commonly mislead students into poor decisions?
People rail about how top heavy schools are with admin folks. Do we really need this new task or can we find existing info about, say, the range of salaries for different sorts of work for bio majors? In an instant, ucbalumnus could provide those.
I do think folks have to be sensible. I did, at one point, suggest accounting to D2, which could have- maybe- been a nice match and holds the likelihood of a job. (Not a major at her college.) She chose psych. I did think, hmmm, she’s both empathetic and analytical, would make a good clinical counselor. Not for an instant did I go looking for average salaries for psych majors. I do know, however, the range a psychologist can make, depending. Also, how hard it can be to break in. With her psych major, she went off into business. There’s no business major at her college, either. But lots of kids who do find work in that.
Ucb, a kid can google job prospects in his major, (not want ads, but from various professional orgs,) if he loves it and wants to work in that specific field. the point made here is that knowing what kids in your major are earning is not necessarily correlated with your major, at all.
Honestly, do you really need “data” to suggest an additional major? I think most parents can say without fear of being wrong to their children “Honey, very few people are able to make a living just doing fine arts.” - the same can be said for the performing artists and novel writers. I know my father had that conversation with me when I told him I wanted to major in Art History. He expressed concern without knowing hard facts about the average or median salary earned by Art History majors immediately after and/or five years after receiving their undergrad degrees.
Many of the engineering colleges and computer science programs did provide the information. That’s because it’s basically a pre-professional major with the graduates doing similar things. I know the CMU had a listing of where each student was headed, how many to each company and how many were going on to grad school.
It would be harder to quantify for someone like my International Relations kid. Some of his friends who did IR with an economics bent are in high paying consulting jobs. Some are headed to law school. My kid did two internships at NGOs. The second internship turned into a job offer. Only problem is he doesn’t like working for them, so current plan is to work there till the end of the year, meanwhile he’s working on going to Officer Training School to join the Navy. I don’t know how you quantify his trajectory! Until the OTS thing kicks in (assuming they accept him) he’ll probably find an easy temp job like working at Starbucks.
“College Measures is assisting state agencies in their efforts to make information about the earnings of graduates from their higher education programs publicly accessible. These data, dubbed “Economic Success Metrics,” show that the degree a student earns, and where they earn it, matters.”
I expect more states to require public colleges to release earnings data.
It is very hard to understand why so many people are against providing students and parents with transparent, easy to understand information.
A medley of hollow arguments:
People already have it
People don’t need it
People won’t look at it
People won’t understand it
People will misuse it
Why do so many people think that students can’t handle the truth? If the average student at college puts in 4 years, and then earns no more than a high school graduate, should they be told that in the beginning? Why is it okay to hide this information from students and parents?
The idea of providing transparent, easy to understand information to students and parents seems to be threatening to many.
Currently, the middle class is shrinking. Even with good information, it is difficult for poor and middle class families to succeed. Why wouldn’t we want to do things like this that may make that challenge just a little easier for some people?
I don’t understand what the big deal is about the info being made available either. Look at it if you want to, ignore if you think it’s nonsense. Virginia Tech, like CMU, has lots of detailed info online in their post grad surveys-lists of employers, average salaries, etc. I found it helpful when my VT kid got an offer he was considering. I could see that the offer was very reasonable based on his major (and was actually a couple of thousand above the mean, from the year before, plus included a bonus). He decided not to ask for more money partly based on that info ( he had his internship there so knew he wanted to work there) so the negotiation was very straightforward as he felt he was being given a fair offer. He did ask if he could get help with relocation expense but was told that was part of what the signing bonus was for. Done.
Actually, I have known parents whose kids were going into majors (like art) where the associated career directions were generally low paying (other than for the few elite practitioners who really hit it big). But both they and the kids were fine with it – but they knew the job and career situation before going in. Of course, it also helps if the kids in question are frugal with money, so that they could be comfortably self-supporting in a lower paid career.
