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Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major
- rubatuga 8y agoWhere’s computer science?
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- pkaye 8y agoThere is no longer any science in computers. Going forward everything is going to be involving some combinations of Javascript, distributed systems and machine learning.
- bytematic 8y agoapplied mathematics perhaps? That's what it used to be called in my area back in the 90's
- notadog 8y agoIt's ranked at 30th
- KZeillmann 8y agoUnderlying study: https://www.bankrate.com/career/most-valuable-college-majors/ https://www.bankrate.com/career/most-valuable-college-majors...
- Hasz 8y agoActual breakdown of all the majors they found https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valuable-College-Majors-Ranked https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valu... Amazingly enough, Bankrate.com uploaded it to... scribd.
- rm999 8y agoFull dataset is here: https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valuable-College-Majors-Ranked https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valu... For those of you who are wondering, Computer Engineering is 14th, "Mathematics and Computer Science" is 23rd and Computer Science is 30th. If I had to guess, CS has a wider income distribution than many of the higher ranking degrees, which are dominated by engineering degrees (many of which have lower unemployment rates too). The non-STEM degrees that beat out CS (assuming we don't count social sciences) are Finance, Public Policy, Economics, and Agricultural Economics. Cool dataset!
- madeuptempacct 8y agoI can't imagine finding a decent job in Finance without connections, I say this as a CFA.
- ThrustVectoring 8y agoPeople overestimate how useful the degree is in general. Like, a lot of it is likely folks with connections choosing to get a Finance degree to leverage them. Or for the CS degree, some of the increased income is explained by average IQ (rather than the choice to get into computer programming vs other activities)
- vostok 8y agoI'm very surprised that economics and finance are higher than computer science. I would have expected that corporate finance jobs would have brought the average below that of CS.
- analog31 8y agoIt's possible that the ability to get a programming job without a CS degree depresses the earning power of that degree simply by increasing the size of the applicant pool. Also, someone who can short circuit the higher education route by getting a job without a degree might be willing to work for a lower starting salary, and still come out ahead.
- dv_dt 8y agoI think I'm most surprised that zoology is ranked second. Wondering how common an occupation that could possibly be?
- aphextron 8y agoIt's the number one undergrad degree for veterinarians. Private vet practices in upscale areas are insanely profitable.
- pkaye 8y agoI also heard vet school is pretty expensive.
- wcfields 8y agoI've also heard that it's even more competitive than human medical schools.
- Retric 8y agoI hear a lot of failed vets become doctors. Veterinary school is harder to get into and their is a lot of overlap in background materials. Med school has a lot of overlap so if somone desideds to swap carriers it’s an easy transition into a high paying job.
- GlenTheMachine 8y agoThis may well be true. While there are hundreds of medical schools in the United States, there is only one vet school per state. And some, like Virginia and Maryland, combine - so there are in fact only about 30.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoCausality can't run from vet school being expensive to veterinary practices being profitable. It can only go the other way - profitable practices lead to school being expensive.
- hnaccy 8y agoWhat are all the zoologists doing?
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- stochastastic 8y agoAs an actuary I don’t think I would recommend it for most people. At the very least, keep your options open by getting a math or CS degree and passing a couple of exams on the side. I feel like this really glosses over the weight of the credentialling process. It also doesn’t appear to talk about the oversupply of entry level applicants.
- secabeen 8y agoInteresting. Do you have any articles about the oversupply of entry-level actuaries? Actuarial science was a career path I considered, but I ended up in systems/network/devops instead.
- stochastastic 8y agoNo, just a general sense. I think the career got publicized at a time when a lot of people were struggling to figure out what to do.
- fcuck_actuarial 8y agoAnnecdotal, but I've experience this personally. These rankings grossly neglect the availability of entry level jobs. And you end up studying a bunch of stuff that is borderline useless for any other career path on a practical level. I consider trying to become an actuary one of the greatest mistakes and waste of time in my life. When I switched to programming, it was like some kind of magical door opened and all of a sudden and the process of finding an entry level job was no longer the equivalent of banging my head against the wall, repeatedly.
- tudorconstantin 8y agoPutting it in another perspective, perhaps that experience made you appreciate programming and software industry more. It might be a high price you paid (the years of pseudo useless studies), but you'll think twice when considering to change industries. I worked in sales for a few years and even became a regional sales manager before switching to programming 12 years ago. Now, whenever I see the IT related problems (like bad programming parctices, lousy code, bad architectures and so on), I remember how bad and really unfixable things can be (for me as an employee) in the rest of the industries and love programming even more.
- robertAngst 8y ago>Actuarial science majors earn an average annual salary of $108,658 Uh, so where is engineering here? 115k/yr I have the ability to engineer solutions to problems, not saying an Actuarial Science student cant build things or root cause issues- but there is a thought-process.
- s0rce 8y agoThe average income for biochemists and molecular biologists is >$100k? Is this heavily skewed by doctors who did biology as a pre-med degree?
- opportune 8y agoYes they are rolling people with advanced degrees into their respective undergrad
- jmcgough 8y agoMost likely. I'd say half or more of the biochem and neuroscience students at my school were pre-med, and the rest planned to start a PhD. There's also good (and potentially lucrative) jobs in sales for someone with that background.
- shoguning 8y agoYes, this is extremely misleading. You can download the data set and do the analysis for yourself. I have--the average income for science majors (biology & chemistry) with BS only is more like $55k as I recall.
- dekhn 8y agolong ago when I was considering majors (1991) molecular biologists made $70K. This makes sense to me- a scientist at a major pharma is going to make over $100K if they are an expert in their field and have 5-10 years experience ($100K in the bay area is a starting salary for many software engineers). Mol Bio has several job outcomes- the worst is lab tech, which alone in the bay area can be $60K, the best is CEO/Founder ($1+M/year), with professor ($150K) in the middle.
- user1324345 8y agothese metrics are always pure garbage. Someone comes up with an equation like: (start salary) + (median salary) + .5 * (job availablilty) + .75 * (growth) ... etc then they rank everything, tweek it, make an article. The scary part is people will read this and parrot this information for potentially years, "did you know actuary is the best job???" This is actually how misinformation spreads.
- natalyarostova 8y agoDon't forget their inevitable spreadsheet errors.
- bitxbit 8y agoBingo. They've been saying this about actuarial science for a very long time. But they fail to mention that (1) there aren't that many positions available, (2) for students smart enough to qualify for the positions (passing the CAS etc) you are far better off going into finance or economics as an undergraduate, and (3) most importantly, actuarial science sets you up for a very specialized and narrow career path.
- stochastastic 8y agoFWIW, I think there is a risk-reward trade off involved for many of us that end up going the actuarial route. I was broke coming out of college, without much of a network or pedigree to fall back on and the prospect of a solidly middle-to-upper class income drew me in. No regrets (other than no multimillion dollar startup exit), but I wouldn’t recommend it for most people.
- QML 8y agoI'm fine with metrics, as long as when people say "best", they'll quote an interpretable formula -- you have to start somewhere. The issue with this metric, however, is that there seems to be no given weight towards the population size. What is the point of a metric if it isn't generalizable? I have the same grip with college rankings. When you look at the top 20, and then at the total student population, you'd realize these rankings are useless for the majority of Americans since only a small fraction will attend these schools.
- dlevine 8y agoI had a friend from college who became an actuary (he was a business major in college). It sounds like, once you finish the first several actuarial exams, you are pretty much set. You don't even need a degree in actuarial science, but it probably makes the exams easier. His job was pretty easy, and since he knew some basic programming, was able to build some Excel macros and wow the people he worked with. The work sounded less exciting than being a programmer working at a startup, but pays well and he has lived in Bermuda and London.
- tfehring 8y ago>It sounds like, once you finish the first several actuarial exams, you are pretty much set. Typically you need ~3 exams to get a job in the field. Then it's a total of 7 exams for associateship and 10 for fellowship (for candidates starting today - it used to be fewer), plus various online courses throughout the process. You can stop at the associate level, but it limits your advancement opportunities at most companies. If you're reasonably good at both math and memorization, the exams range from ~50-100 hours of studying each for the first few to ~300-400 each for the later ones. Usually about half of those hours are on company time once you're working in the field, though exam season is still pretty miserable. >His job was pretty easy, and since he knew some basic programming, was able to build some Excel macros and wow the people he worked with. This is still common, but it's getting rarer every year. At a minimum, every entry-level candidate my company hires nowadays has taken a couple of intro programming courses (usually in Python or Java) and knows a bit of VBA, SQL, and/or R on top of that. The field has been attracting lots of young people who might have otherwise become programmers, myself included. >The work sounded less exciting than being a programmer working at a startup Probably true in general, but some actuarial roles are more exciting than others. I was bored to death in my first actuarial job (financial reporting) but transitioned pretty early to a much more interesting role. It helps that I'm doing some ML-heavy modeling, meaning that I get to learn new frameworks in addition to the standard Excel + RDBMS stuff. Working half the hours of a programmer at a startup for the same pay and better benefits is also a plus. With all of that being said, I'm still semi-actively looking to leave the field. While I love what I'm working on right now, I'm concerned about getting pidgenholed into the field (and into insurance more generally) in the long term, especially since I'd likely end up in a much less interesting role at some point.
- randomstring 8y agoHaving done my BS in Match and CS at a school with a parallel Actuarial program, I got a good look at what being an actuary is about. If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder. I think this really appeals to people who are good at math, but maybe don't want to go into academia. That said of all the actuaries I went to school with, none liked their jobs and all eventually moved on to do something else.
- dv_dt 8y agoWhat do actuaries do from day to day? Are they old-school original data scientists, or something else?
- mr_overalls 8y agoA day in the life of an actuary: https://www.beanactuary.org/what/do/?fa=day-in-the-life https://www.beanactuary.org/what/do/?fa=day-in-the-life
- stochastic_monk 8y agoEdit: this isn’t about the day-to-day, but it gives perspective from an actuary I know who has served other roles. My mother is an actuary. She was a stay at home mom for 25 years but returned to the workforce about 5 years ago and recently became VP at a large insurance company. She says she’s always enjoyed her work as an actuary, and she preferred it over college math instruction, which she could do because FSAs are considered PhD-level. (And did while her 6 children were home.)
- roel_v 8y agoDoes Karen have 36 hour work days? It's either that, or she should prefix every thing she did with 'dabbled a bit in ...'.
- tfehring 8y agoThe day-to-day is basically a combination of: * Moving data around - mostly using Excel + SQL, though R is growing in popularity * Using that data to calculate figures that are significant to the business - including premiums, IRRs, profit margins, and the value of future claims * Presenting the results of those calculations to management and recommending a course of action I'm not sure what "old-school original data scientists" do/did or how similar this is.
- freefrancisco 8y agoAccording to analysis performed by bank actuaries.
- nateburke 8y agoOne thing missing from this discussion is the effect of the well-established exam-based credentialing system on the profession as a barrier to entry. Does it counterbalance at all the kind of ageism that folks working as 45+ software engineers sometimes encounter? This is a sincere question, as I can also would not be surprised if insurance companies' CFOs would be the _first_ people to recognize the additional costs associated with insuring older workers with families, especially in the post-demutualization era.
- amigocontigo 8y agoIn my experience (as an actuary) dealing with CFOs - this thought never crosses their mind. Even the most incompetent C-suite execs I have dealt with understand the value of hiring the best people they can find. In general, companies don't deal with rising healthcare costs by hiring younger, less experienced workers. Instead, they restructure their insurance plans to alleviate the increase in insurance premiums. This part of what health actuaries (at least on the consulting side of things) do on a daily basis.
- DylanDmitri 8y agoThis is partially a reporting bias issue, because these are average values across all colleges. The actuarial exams set the bar high for everyone regardless of college. Looking at degrees only across top colleges would paint a different picture, probably with law and business jumping significantly. Ivy Leagues don't offer act sci majors, students just take economics instead.
- ArtWomb 8y agoThey also recruit right out of Statistics programs. So you might be able to pursue alternatives in Data Science if you find the field not to your liking.
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- madrox 8y agoI did a stats undergrad at one of the few schools to offer that kind of program. Many of my peers went on to be actuaries. I'd actually recommend any undergrad program that has a strong underpinning in statistical thinking. It's very difficult to learn without formal education and is oh so very useful in so many fields right now.
- learnstats2 8y agoStudents of financial decision-making come out top of financial decision-making tree. Surely it would be embarrassing if they didn't.
- p33p 8y agoAs an actuary, I can not recommend it to anyone with a technical background. I have degrees in mathematics and actuarial science, and I consider my actuarial science degree completely worthless. A mathematics and/or computer science degree will teach you more in terms of how to think than anyone with an actuarial science degree. If you’d like to take a major where your professors literally teach to the exam/test, then you’re in luck, because that’s what your degree will get. Having been in the workforce a handful of years now, there are a lot of intelligent actuaries and also a lot of arrogance about the work they have done. I personally am frustrated with the career, but the salary in a low cost of living area makes it difficult to transition into something else. Given all of this, the valuation of how majors are ranked is silly to me. The criteria almost automatically weight actuarial science as the favorite.
- madeuptempacct 8y agoI am guessing it's easy to transition to machine learning / data analysis and make 20-40% over what senior devs make. At least that's what I see in my area.
- p33p 8y agoI would be really impressed if someone with an actuarial science degree has any experience with machine learning. That is not a skill that is taught outside of self learning or an absolute need. It may be more applicable in a property casualty company where there are things like telematics.
- eyeball 8y agoThe society of actuaries is now testing basic analytics and R programming as part of the exam system. The Introduction to statistical learning book is on the exam syllabus.
- p33p 8y agoYou are correct, and I view it as an attempt to remain relevant in an area they feel threatened by. We will see what the exam ends up being like, but I have little faith in the SOA being able successful test someone’s experience in “predictive analytics” with a five hour proctored exam.
- alouisos 8y agoBeware, actuarial science will be replaced by AI and the incentives of insurance is high to replace this workforce with AI. Believe me, I have been doing an AI startup in exactly this space
- IncRnd 8y agoYou'll be hard-pressed to get business people to use AI for actuarial work. If the intent is to codify rules in an AI that performs actuarial work, then it is far less error-prone to simply write a program that uses the rules directly. AI is not the proper solution, if I understand from your post what you are trying to solve.
- thedevil 8y agoI wouldn't be too confident in that. Actuaries are not able to implement the models they'd like to. Regulators don't like complex models and they don't like models with disparate impact. Or models that make some risks (accurately) expensive. I'm a developer now but by last few years in actuary work were mostly spent helping insurance companies deal with regulation. We did some modeling with with machine learning but ultimately the models that got approved had to be simple (compared to machine learning). My job before that was a lot about internal negotiations with other departments. Better models were not the main bottleneck.
- clarkeni 8y agoAbsolutely, great points. I think there could be scope to use ML on the pricing side however, while leaving the reserving models explainable to regulators.
- m00n 8y agoMay I ask who will lose his professional credentials, when your AI does not follow established practises and insurance coverage goes belly-up?
- gaius 8y agoI am reminded of https://xkcd.com/1831/ https://xkcd.com/1831/
- djsumdog 8y agoI had a friend who wanted to be a radiologist because he uses some income calculators and decided that would be what would give him the biggest return on his investment. Guy had trouble passing Anatomy I; think he had to take it twice. From the way he talked, I don't think he realized it was a full MD position; residency and all. Guy was not suited to be a doctor. It took him years, marriage to an abusive woman, the Air Force and a divorce to finally get out of the idea he would be a doctor. Recently he tried to hire me to write software for a "Crypto currency hedge fund." TL;DR If you chase after money, you're going to miss out on life. The US market wants to turn University into a huge investment you need an ROI on to lock you into a career path you'll probably hate. It was not like that for me, and I only graduated 12 years ago. Small state schools were affordable. I learned a lot in school, but today I can't even recommend it to people starting out, unless they can do it with little to no debt. I cannot recommend bootcamp or other for-profit schools. I wish it was easier for people to find something they love doing and not have to worry about money.
- azhenley 8y agoAre there any software engineering projects for undergrad CS students that will get them exposure to actuarial science? I know very, very little about actuarial science, but I think helping my students learn about it could really benefit them.
- p33p 8y agoThey would be better off getting exposure to anything and everything related to finance, statistics, and operations research. Actuarial science specific topics include pricing and reserving of insurance products. I would love to see more CS students with an understanding of finance and time value of money.
- mirimir 8y agoI was gobsmacked by the ranking for zoologists. What sorts of jobs do they have to put them at #2?
- CydeWeys 8y agoVeterinarian. Though you need advanced degrees for that and it also helps to be entrepreneurial, as you make more starting your own practice than joining someone else's. Pre-med should be up there too for the same reason, though there's more diversity in degrees for people who go on to become doctors.
- mirimir 8y agoThanks. Didn't think of that. But right, a zoology BS is the obvious prerequisite for vet school. But the data would be a lot more useful if aggregated by terminal degree. I tried to look at the data,[0] but it won't display for me. Too much stuff blocked in my Firefox, I guess :( 0) https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valuable-College-Majors-Ranked https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valu...
- CydeWeys 8y agoYes, data by terminal degree would be a lot more useful. Zoology is basically useless at earning more money than a generic degree unless you go onto becoming a full-on vet, so it's not the zoology degree that's increasing income but the graduate degree. And that graduate degree is expensive. Contrast with CS, which didn't make this list, but which by itself does substantially increase income over the generic undergrad degree.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThis smells suspiciously like a flimsy study designed to reach a predetermined conclusion so as to boost the pool of applicants for systematic salary suppression. Similar to how the STEM "shortage" was manufactured despite no attendant rise in salaries from the supposedly limited supply of workers.
- dang 8y agoPlease don't make inflammatory claims based on "smells". That's unsubstantive and just leads to people repeating the same flamey things in every thread. It also breaks several of the site guidelines, such as the ones against flamebait and shallow dismissals. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Proven 8y ago“Financial engineering” that doesn’t actually produce anything. It mostly there to help the State and Wall Street be as reckless as legally possible.
- jamesrcole 8y agoI find it a bit sad that "valuable" is, without any comment, treated as synonymous with "profitable".
- m00n 8y agoWhat interpretation of "valuable" do you propose instead? A discussion of remuneration was exactly what I expected when reading the headline.
- jamesrcole 8y agoFirst of all, there doesn't have to be a single definition. Here's some other factors that could be part of "value": - degree of job satisfaction - how much that sort of work benefits the world It's very narrow to equate value only with money. And because I know someone is going to misinterpret what I'm saying, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with equating value with money. It's just a bit sad when that's all value is equated with, and more so when it's just an unstated assumption like in the article. You can compare all this with how college degrees used to be about more than just getting a job. The goal used to include making the person a well rounded person. These days it seems treated solely in financial terms.
- m00n 8y agoI was thinking along these lines, too. But the problem with job satisfaction is: Do you rely on self-reported job satisfaction or objective quantitities like absenteeism or turnover? Both are hard to make comparable between different fields: In some (think med, law etc) the cost of education will prohibit changing careers, regardless of if you make millions as patent lawyer or heart surgeon (assuming that the latter adds more "value to society"). So I think it is hard to come up with a consistent objective measure of satisfaction. On the other hand, if you poll people, you might find, that fine arts majors were very happy with their college life, but actually work in a different field to pay rent (I happen to know some music majors). The problem with the societal benefit definition is: It very much depends on your own system of beliefs. Is an education in business and employing 5 people, more or less valuable than a job as a veterinary? Since most of the undergrad majors also have a variety of possible jobs they could lead into, this is even harder to quantify. So maybe just do away with rankings :-)
- johnhenry 8y agoI studied mathematics in college with the express intent of becoming an actuary when I graduated. Once I had graduated, I decided not to be an actuary mostly because I was sick of taking tests.
- Bootvis 8y agoI’m an actuary (not of the qualified variety) and don’t share the observations made in most of the comments here: - I get to spend most of the time in R working on cash flow modeling; - We get to use a lot of data which makes for interesting challenges; - I get a say in how we solve problems IT wise; - We need to understand the business to do our own modeling correctly; - Pay isn’t that great. AMA P.S. I’m in Europe
- DavidHm 8y agoI suspect this is very much dependent on the country. My bachelor was in stats & actuarial sciences (though I never worked in the field), and in my country there's a big shortage of qualified actuaries. So the average salaries are pretty high and it's a safe and stable work (albeit dreadfully boring, which is why I never went into the field)
- dmhn 8y agoThe problem with an Actuarial career is that there is no room to advance. When my father finished graduate school, he became an actuary. Fortunately, the insurance company went under, and he moved to finance only a few years later.
- clarkeni 8y agoA good proportion (often all) of C-level insurance executives were actuaries that moved up the ranks. I would say it has quite good advancement opportunities.
- unixhero 8y agoReminds me of the movie Kafka. Must watch!
- m00n 8y agoInteresting to see, how the usually data driven crowd on this site largely dismisses a data point and the usual talking points are reversed: 40h work-weeks that pay great -> Must be boring. Economics study is done by economists -> Probably skewed. How dare these people * equating carreer value with expected profits * using a weighted average to come up with a number * expect candidates to pass hard stats tests before constructing insurance products Programming in JS web frameworks is clearly superior to any work done using Excel and be it supplying the nation with health coverage. /s
- dalbasal 8y agoThe remember this tidbit from college, where actuarial studies was ranked as the highest earning qualifications. I think this comes down to a combination of (1) being relatively difficult and/or esoteric, so the pool of people is small and (2) having a strong guild structure which ensures a "market" structure that favours qualified) chartered individuals. Apart from being operationally important, actuaries are part of insurance companies CYA. Ultimately, even today, when a profession can impose structure on itself (eg lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc.) that both admits/certifies a limited number of professionals and requires certified professionals for certain tasks... It still tends to work out well for members. For the most part this is legacy, and is found in older professions. If insurance was invented today, actuaries would probably be data scientists.
- te0006 8y agothat short-lived moment of hope when I misread the beginning of the title as "actual science"
- cluoma 8y agoI started out wanting to be an actuary. Did all the preliminary tests I was able to do before associate level. Like many I bought into the 'actuary is a great, high-paying career' line that was touted during my university. The job market in Canada is incredibly saturated though. Having all tests out of the way was not even enough to stand out it seems. And I ended up moving to Europe to work in data science.
- DocEasyE 8y agoYea i was wondering how pharmacy is higher than computer science, that degree is over flooded and the way cvs and walgreens work not a lot of room for pharmacist, that unemployment has to be wrong
- clarkeni 8y agoTo offer a dissenting opinion, I have found stimulating work in actuary - having worked in economic scenario generation and market risk modelling. But I have also had actuarial work that was closer to accounting than I would have liked. Certainly you have to pick your roles carefully - which is perhaps only feasible in large markets.
- sjb554 8y agoConsulting actuary here. I majored in Econ, started taking exams after I graduated. I don't really see the value in the actuarial degree, but I do see the value in taking the exams. Some people might be frustrated with their place in a given company, but overall it is a great career. One of the keys is to stay up on current tech and always be learning new things. It seems pretty easy to get stuck into a position where you are making baskets all day.