More law and medicine schools are dropping out of U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings, so people who want to go to college are looking for other ways to compare programs.
Some people say that the popular method for ranking colleges is based on numbers that don’t take into account many things that affect student success, like how many students get jobs after graduation and how easily course credits can be transferred to other programs.
One important thing to think about is the median earnings after graduation, which can have a big effect on job outcomes.
The median salary for people who study nuclear engineering technologies or become technicians in that field is $107,804 three years after graduation. This is followed by biomathematics, bioinformatics, and computational biology ($98,074), operations research ($96,452), marine transportation ($94,032), and petroleum engineering ($93,515).
We ranked North Carolina’s degree majors by the median earnings three years after college for people with bachelor’s degrees. We used data from the Department of Education for the 2020-21 school year.
There are some degree programs that can only be earned at one college in the state. When more than one college offers the same subject, the analysis shows the median salary across all of them.
When it comes to college earnings in North Carolina, applied mathematics is the best major. Three years after graduation, the average graduate makes $86,155. Computer engineering ($81,527) and biomedical/medical engineering ($79,892) are two other high-paying areas.
On the other hand, some degrees make you much less money. The lowest median pay for graduates in graphic communications is $20,902, followed by graduates in dance ($20,952) and audiovisual communications ($23,798).
What do you think? Should money be a big reason for picking a major, or are there other things that are more important?