Bachelor’s Degrees Leading to Highest Salaries
These jobs pay handsomely early in your career — and big bucks later.
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A bachelor’s degree today is basically like a high school diploma 20 years ago. Everybody’s got one and the only way to get a decent salary is to go to grad school — and get yourself even further in student loan debt.
Right?
Wrong — especially if you’re in certain industries.
Payscale examined the highest-paying bachelors degrees by salary potential — and found that plenty have nice entry-level pay and lead to six-figure salaries by the time you reach mid-career. (It’s all part of Payscale’s 2015-2016 College Salary Report, which also ranked colleges based on salary potential. Here’s how Philly colleges ranked on potential salary.)
Some interesting findings in the bachelor’s degree study:
- 25 out of the top 26 jobs are in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.)
- The outlier was “government” which could certainly have a STEM connection but doesn’t necessarily have to.
- When ranking the top 26 by percentage of alumni who feel their work is making the world a better place, engineering dominated — with mining engineering coming out on top, followed by petroleum engineering, chemical engineering and aeronautical engineering.
