Starting Salaries of Recent College Grads

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has just published its Fall 2009 Salary Survey report on starting salary offers to new college graduates, in this case the Class of 2009 bachelor’s degree graduates. The full report is available only to paying members of NACE. But some of the report's findings are available in this public press release. The table below summarizes the main findings.

disciplines	average starting salary offer ($)	percent change from previous year
petroleum engineering	85,417	13
chemical engineering	65,675	3
computer science	61,467	0.6
electrical engineering	60,509	5
all engineering majors	59,670	4.2
mechanical engineering	59,222	3.9
information sciences and systems	52,886	1.1
management information systems	50,573	-1.8
economics	49,628	-2.8
finance	49,163	2.1
all majors	48,633	-1.2
accounting	48,471	1
business management	44,607	-3.4
marketing	42,260	1.8
political science	40,009	3
history	38,445	1
liberal arts	36,624	-0.3
english	36,604	3.2
psychology	34,573	1.4
sociology	34,290	-3.2
visual and performing arts	34,114	-2.7

For some reason, the press release doesn't say anything about science and math majors. Anyway, although engineering grads are well ahead of the pack -- and deservedly so, IMHO -- I am glad to see that econ majors are doing pretty well.