Which College Grads Make the Most Money?

college debt college major college score card degree program income salary Dec 06, 2019

The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article, which I'll link below, siting their review of an interactive chart for what I call, government transparency. The chart seeks to give students and parents a little more information when choosing a college and a degree program when it comes to student debt and first-year income.

Although this is good information that students choosing a college and a degree program should consider, keep in mind a few things:

-- The data is 3 and 4 years old. Meaning the economy is better in the last several years, thus the job rate and pay rate is higher than just a few years ago.

-- Much of this should be COMMON SENSE. There are degree programs that should not be degree programs in the first place. Spending $100k on an Underwater basketweaving degree is not a wise decision regardless of what school is chosen. When coaching your children, at least council them to be a little realistic about the income they would likely have in the program they choose.

This info is a starting point. What I DO LIKE about it, is the interactive chart allows you to choose the college or university AND the degree program and find out what the average federal debt to 1st-year income was in 2016.

As noted in the article, the debt numbers are a little deceiving because it DOES NOT take into account private loans or parent loans. So the info is likely skewed just a bit. For example... The chart referenced in the article for Louisiana State University states $18750 in student debt for Mechanical Engineering graduates in 2016, vs a BusinessReport article using stats from LendEDU in August of 2018 for 2017 LSU graduates AVERAGED $24933 in debt, which includes the many types of debt and averages the debt across all degree programs, of which there are hundreds. (That year Louisiana scored 19th among states with least amount of college loan debt.)

Regardless of the deficiencies, it's a good place to start.

(If you don't care to read the WSJ article and want to go straight to finding the info for a specific school and degree program, go here: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/)

Bottom line is that there's more to graduating debt-free than meets the eye. Check out the programs I offer to help you help your teen graduate debt-free.

Which College Grads Make the Most Money?

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