Most lucrative college degrees ��
Newly minted
electrical engineers can relax, even if their psychology-major
friends may be sweating
By Leslie Haggin Geary,
CNN/Money Staff Writer
New York (CNN/Money) - When they entered college four years ago,
their future job prospects looked bright. Now, college
seniors who graduate this month are finding that the world
outside the Ivory Tower has changed drastically.
Job offers are no longer abundant. And graduates, who
once commanded high salaries, signing bonuses and other
sweetheart deals before they signed on to a working gig,
are learning to set their sights much lower.
"Graduates who haven't received full-time job offers
are looking for other things like part-time employment,"
says Camille Luckenbaugh, spokesperson for the
National
Association of Colleges and Employers.
"Some are
willing to do unpaid internships to get their foot in the
door of a company that may convert them to a full-time
hire when things change."
When it comes to hiring, there's good news and bad. On
one hand, employers are generally going to maintain the
number of college grads they recruit to their payrolls
from last year. On the other, companies slashed the number
of college hires by 36 percent last year, according to
Luckenbaugh.
Grads who are fortunate enough to be hired this year
will find that roughly four out of 10 employers -- 44
percent -- will keep salary levels unchanged. For example,
electrical engineering grads will typically be paid a
starting salary of $50,566, up just 0.5% from last spring,
NACE found.
Nearly as many employers, 42 percent, are cutting
salaries for new hires. Psychology majors, for example,
may be shocked to learn that their average starting salary
runs about $26,738, nearly 11 percent less than what they
would have been offered a year ago.
Even grads with top-earning degrees - such as computer
science majors -- are seeing smaller pay offers. In
general, these computer gurus are being offered starting
pay of $46,536. That's among the most lucrative offers for
any major but nearly an 8 percent cut from the average
$50,352 that computer science majors earned after
graduation last year.
With that in mind, parents who had hoped their children
would move smoothly into lucrative jobs after college may
need to adjust their expectations. Instead, some grads may
need more loans -- or even free room and board -- from Mom
and Dad to get by.
Luckenbaugh urges graduates, and college students, not
to despair. After all, a college degree is worth something
and the more education you have, the higher your salary
tends to be.
That observation is borne out by government statistics,
which show that the unemployment rate for adults over age
25 who have just a high school diploma runs 4.2 percent
while their median weekly income hovers around $520. For
college grads, unemployment levels have hit 2.3 percent on
average with median income levels at $924.
Find this
article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/07/pf/saving/q_jobless_grads
