The Top Ten Highest Paying College Majors | The Odyssey Online
Start writing a post
Student Life

The Top Ten Highest Paying College Majors

All that glitters is not gold.

304
The Top Ten Highest Paying College Majors
YouTube

These days, it seems like everyone is going to college with one goal in mind: to make money. Everyone has aspiring dreams of graduating college and working right out of school with a six figure salary, but the question is, what majors should people who want to make a lot of money look into?

Well, there is one very interesting trend when it comes to the top ten highest paying majors, nine out of ten of them are all specializing in the engineering field. Shocker. It will be interesting to unveil which major is the only major in the top ten outside the world of engineering.

The top-paying degree is petroleum engineering, according to a new report from The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The report used 2013 Census data and concluded that employees who graduate with this degree earn a median annual salary of $136,000 per year. The second-highest earning degrees are ranked as pharmacy, pharmaceutical sciences and pharmaceutical administration. In addition to being the second highest paying college major, this is also one of the most difficult fields to enter simply because of the number of people trying to enter this field. These pharmaceutical graduates earned an average of $113,000 annually. The report broke down earnings for 137 college majors. It found that after a year, the salary difference between the highest- and lowest-paying major is $97,000. Over the course of a career, it turns out to be a difference of $3.4 million. While engineering majors make up the majors that bring in the most money, business management and administration is the most common major, with 8% of the workforce comprising this major. Business majors, science, technology, engineering and math majors make up a vast majortity of the American workforce at 46%.

The list of highest paying college majors is in order, respectively. Petroleum engineering, pharmacy (which includes a wide variety of specialties) metallurgical engineering, mining and mineral engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, geological engineering. The median annual salaries of these jobs is also listed, respectively at $136,000, $113,000, $98,000, $97,000, $96,000, $93,000, $90,000, $87,000, $87,000, $87,000.

Now, to break away from the monotony and statistical data of this topic and to revisit a point I made earlier, I have to be able to interject my personal opinion on this matter. I believe very strongly that one should not only be able to enjoy his or hers job, but they should also be able to make a good living by doing it in order to make enough money to live comfortably and support their families. It is always important to be able to give your kids everything that you never had as a child, and I think that from a philosophical note, one is not going to be able to accomplish these things without the proper funding. But, I am also a big proponent of not just wanting to major in something and take a job in that field because it pays a lot of money. You have to consider things like what you are good at and if you will actually enjoy this job, because if you take a job solely for the money and you end up hating what you do, that puts you in a very bad situation. I am often reminded of something my great uncle once told me when we were discussing what I wanted to do for a job at one family Christmas. He said, “Do what you love and the money will come”. So, I plan to live by this as I choose to major in public relations in college, a major in which I have the opportunity to exercise my people skills and study topics that I enjoy.

The message that I would like to convey to students in high school that are undecided on a major, and to students in college that may be in the same boat is to do what you love and the money will come, eventually. It may take you years of experience in the field of your job to finally make the money that you always dreamed of. But, money is not always the true source of happiness. Doing what you love on a daily basis, no matter what your paycheck says, is the true source of happiness in the workforce.

Report this Content
This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
Student Life

8 Things I Realized After My First Semester In College

Actually, Kylie Jenner, 2018 is the year of realizing things.

99
Friends

The first semester of college is famous for being one of the most difficult transitions of one's young adult life. You're thrown into a completely new area where the majority of the people surrounding you are strangers in an academic environment that's much more challenging then what you've grown accustomed to for the past twelve years. On top of that, you probably share a room with another person (or even multiple people) on the lumpiest "mattress" you've ever slept on.

With this change comes a lot of questions: what do I want to major in? What am I passionate about? Is what I'm passionate about something I'm actually good at? Why does the bathroom smell like cranberry juice and vodka? What is that thing at the bottom of the shower drain?

Keep Reading...Show less
girls with mascot
Personal Photo

College is tough, we all know. Here are 8 gifs you will 99% relate to if you are in college.

Keep Reading...Show less
Student Life

7 Things College Has Taught Me

Other than knowledge and all those important things

412
7 Things College Has Taught Me
We Know Memes

So, college is the place where you're supposed to learn all of these amazing life skills.

Here are the top seven skills I have learned thus far.

Keep Reading...Show less
college

College is some of the greatest years of anyone's life. Its a time to be outrageous, different and free; a time to do everything you were afraid to do. Here are 38 things you will learn during your four (maybe, five or six) years in college!

1. As a freshman, one does get to be called “freshman” by upperclassmen when they walk to parties in a mob of people.

Keep Reading...Show less
Adulting

6 Unrealistic Expectations Society Has For Young Adults

Don't let the thesaurus-inspired vocabularies in our résumés fool you. We're actually just big kids.

3068
boy in adult clothes

Well over four feet tall and 100 pounds in weight, many of us "young adults" of the world still consider ourselves children. Big, working, college-attending, beer-drinking children. We may live on our own, know how to cook noodles, and occasionally use a planner, but don't be fooled; the youthful tendencies that reside within us still make their way into our daily lives. From choosing to stay up until 3:00 a.m. playing video games on a school night to going out in 30 degree weather without a coat, we still make decisions that our parents and grandparents would shake their heads at in disappointment. So why are we expected to know exactly how to be a wise, professional, sensible adult? It's not that we're irresponsible (for the most part, anyway). It's that we are young, inexperienced, and still have the sought-after, enthusiastic mentality that we can do and be whatever we want, which has not yet been tarnished by the reality of the world. These are just a few of the unrealistic expectations that society has for young adults.

Keep Reading...Show less

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Facebook Comments