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Comment by rm999 | Hacker News Reader

Full dataset is here: https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valu...

For those of you who are wondering, Computer Engineering is 14th, "Mathematics and Computer Science" is 23rd and Computer Science is 30th. If I had to guess, CS has a wider income distribution than many of the higher ranking degrees, which are dominated by engineering degrees (many of which have lower unemployment rates too). The non-STEM degrees that beat out CS (assuming we don't count social sciences) are Finance, Public Policy, Economics, and Agricultural Economics. Cool dataset!

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I can't imagine finding a decent job in Finance without connections, I say this as a CFA.

People overestimate how useful the degree is in general. Like, a lot of it is likely folks with connections choosing to get a Finance degree to leverage them. Or for the CS degree, some of the increased income is explained by average IQ (rather than the choice to get into computer programming vs other activities)

I'm very surprised that economics and finance are higher than computer science. I would have expected that corporate finance jobs would have brought the average below that of CS.

It's possible that the ability to get a programming job without a CS degree depresses the earning power of that degree simply by increasing the size of the applicant pool. Also, someone who can short circuit the higher education route by getting a job without a degree might be willing to work for a lower starting salary, and still come out ahead.

The value of any degree is always going to be measured against supply and demand. There has been a huge push to get more people into computer science, thus increasing the supply beyond the rate of demand. Declining wages would be the logical conclusion (and motivation) for this.

Do you have a source saying that they're declining?

My comment was referencing the fact that computer science is ranked 30th by their metric of 'value', which does indeed seem to be much lower than one would have expected not that long ago. In terms of specific numbers, I'm also very curious but it's surprisingly difficult to find precise numbers. So what I did was grabbed an archive of the Burea of Labor services page on software developers. Here it is:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130305174000/https://www.bls.g...

Unfortunately that only provides 3 data points. The first number is the nominal value, the second is the inflation adjusted to 2016.

2010 = $90,530 = $99,643

2012 = $93,350 = $97,584

2016 = $102,280 = $102,280

Not sure what can be taken away from the numbers as there's only 3 points and with mixed directionality. But probably better than nothing. Do let me know if you find more indicative figures.

They are using "weighted" salary data without specifying how the data is weighted. I suspect this is what is skewing the data.

Like, do most zoologists really make >$110k/yr?

I'm guessing Bankrate is taking people graduate degrees and applying salary information to bachelors degrees. The zoologist with high salaries probably have Ph.Ds in veterinary sciences. Same with Health&Medical Prep; the high salary is likely the result of most people pursuing an MD.

Finance people in IB/PE would be pulling it up. It’s impressive that programming is that high.

Having worked in trading (not IB, but the recruiting process is similar) - it's useful to know that relatively few people get into IB and fewer stay in IB or go on to MF PE.

Corporate jobs pay significantly less and make up a much greater portion of the jobs. IB is a low headcount industry.

Having seen that industry as well, the numbers there are very high, and can skew true ever loving crap out of any average.

Most of them seem to make sense, but why is Zoology #2?

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