CompSci majors win

[bigbadwolf]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...and-which-major-will-make-you-richest/359628/

Everybody graduates from college with a major. So I wanted to know not just which college grads get richest but which college majors are the tickets to richness?PayScale tracks that, too. And no degree in America is more valuable than a computer-science major at Stanford, Columbia, or Berkeley.

 

[GoIllini]

The problem is that CS is a much more difficult degree than anthropology at your typical school. It's not theoretical physics, but it gets at least a 7 out of 10 on the difficulty scale. A C is still a grade you have to earn in CS at most programs. At UIUC, we started with a class of 250 and finished with a class of ~150- 100 students had transferred out to other majors.

I wonder what the results look like when we poll people based on what degree they started pursuing.

Finally, I'd argue that there's a lot of skew in the distribution, and much of the PV in the salary is front-loaded. There aren't a lot of guys over 40 in Silicon Valley. And a few 23-year-old billionaires raise the average but not the median.

For the 15% of the country that can handle CS, it's a good major. For everyone else, there's accounting, finance, or nursing. Just make sure your degree gives you skills for an actual job.