PayScale College Salary Report of 2012-2013 for the West Coast Universities is given at:
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/west-coast-schools
This study has come to the forefront from an article in the New York Times of Sept. 13, 2013, by James B. Stewart. The mobile link is http://nyti.ms/1esEX2U That article also contains valuable opinions from leaders in education.
The ranking of colleges by the starting salaries and mid-career salaries is quite controversial, and I wanted to examine the results for West Coast Universities. First of all, the reader can examine the complete list for themselves, I just wanted to list the top ten, and then examine the large public universities. No slight to all schools is intended. I also don’t intend to take a political stand, but many of my comments will raise questions about it.
The list came to importance when President Obama suggested that the money earned should be balanced by the cost of an education, and financial aid directed to those schools that gave the best deal. While the academic community is aghast at this simplicity, I am looking at the rankings because they are “out there”, and need to be critically examined.
Lets get the data out first, and then critique it. Two numbers are given for each university: the average starting salary; and the average mid-career salary. The ranking is by the mid-career salary. I round off unapologetically. Again, this is for the West Coast.
TOP TEN
1 Harvey Mudd 67 135
2 CalTech 67 127
3 Stanford 58 114
4 Santa Clara U 51 108
5 UC Berkeley 52 103
6 Claremont 50 102
7 USC 51 99
8 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 49 97
9 UC San Diego 48 97
9-tie Calif. College of the Arts 43 97
MAIN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES
15 UCLA 49 92
15-tie UC Davis 47 92
17 UC Santa Barbara 47 91
19 U. Washington 48 90
20 UC Irvine 47 90
26 Oregon Inst. of Technology 54 87
29 UC Riverside 43 86
29-tie Gonzaga U. 44 86
48 UC Santa Cruz 42 80
On the National listing, Princeton is 1, Harvey Mudd is 2, CalTech is 3, Stanford is 10, UC Berkeley is 31, USC is 54, UCSD is 65, UC Davis and UCLA are tied at 89, and UCI is tied for 100 with Johns Hopkins.
One of the main comments is that ratings of the top campuses reflect the fact that they produce a lot of engineers, and on the West Coast, this would include a lot of computer science students, that command high salaries. I should add that the Steve Jobs story shows that engineers need liberal arts majors to interface with the public, in giving useful formats for technology and in presentations. English and psychology and philosophy majors are needed in all aspects of communication with the public.
Another slanting of the salaries may reflect the geographical area of the university, such as Silicon Valley, where housing and living expenses can be very high, requiring high salaries.
In general, describing anything by ranking is a poor reflection of what numbers are actually being used in the ranking. For example, compare the mid-career incomes between the tie at rank 10 of $97 thousand, with the tie at rank 30 of $86 thousand. They differ by a factor of three in rank, or by 20 ranks, but the actual difference in salary is $13 out of $86, or only 15%. Two of the schools in that comparison actually have the same starting salary of $43 thousand.
The UCSD comparison with UC Riverside is notable in two other ways. UCSD is often considered the next in academic ranking near to UC Berkeley, and UCLA. The SAT scores for entering freshmen in the three subjects for UC Riverside are 90 to 120 points below those for entering students at UCSD. Yet the starting salaries at both are the same, and the mid-career salaries only differ by 15%. This speaks well for the high educational quality that UC achieves at all of its campuses.
PayScale uses median salaries. This is good for typical students, since recent data shows that the top 1% of earners pick up 20% of the income. The top 10% pick up 50% of the income.
One has to ask how accurate are the averages, since many rankings are close. The averages are reported to three significant figures, or one part per thousand at times. If we consider that they covered 1,000 schools with 1.4 million surveys, thats 1,400 per school or 700 per school of recent graduates or mid-career. The surveys were undoubtedly voluntary, and people valuing privacy or very busy or with low salaries may not have answered. How do you test the limits of accuracy under those circumstances? If this were a yes or no pole, or a political contest, the accuracy would be the square root of the number poled or 26.5, divided by the number poled or 700, giving about 4% accuracy. PayScale puts a confidence level on the medians of 5%, but for top earning schools or small liberal arts schools at 10%.
PayScale does use the median salaries in comparing salaries by major, which may be more accurate than comparing salaries by schools.
The PayScale survey only includes graduates that are employed full time and that do not go on for advanced degrees. This would be a drawback for use of that data for a Government comparison of the worth of schools. The top salaries are also often earned by those that go on for graduate degrees or to professional schools, such as medicine and law. A large percentage of graduates of top universities do this. However, their first employment would then be as a teaching assistant ($31,500 at UCI), and then a research assistant ($33,400 and up at UCI). That might then be followed by a postdoc ($39,300 and up). So those most highest trained don’t show up at high salaries until the mid-career. They should be included in comparing the values of schools.
Finally, the highest salaries do not necessarily go to people whose work is most helpful to society, such as doctors, legislators, professors, social workers, or artists, for example.
A typical career can last 40 years, and maybe 45, including years in advanced training. The best occupations are really those that are most satisfying for the individual students.
