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I don't follow your logic. "This isn't crazy for one of the highest-earning majors" is true, but what does it have to do with the average college student's expe
by wutbrodo 4y ago
I don't follow your logic. "This isn't crazy for one of the highest-earning majors" is true, but what does it have to do with the average college student's expectations? Agreed that the headline stat is very broad, but the number is eye-poppingly wrong enough that there's plenty of signal. The majority of students _aren't_ in CS, and the article mentions that the overestimate holds across most majors:
> High salary expectations are common among students of all majors, but those studying journalism, psychology, and liberal arts are the most likely to overestimate the value of their degrees. Journalism students, in particular, are the most delusional, expecting $107,040 just a year after they graduate — 139% more than the median journalist’s starting salary.
> Meanwhile, computer science majors have the most realistic expectations, overestimating their starting salary by only 27%.
- usrn 4y agoThe problem is expecting an average salary for all the majors to be a meaningful number.
- wutbrodo 4y agoIt's a large enough disparity that it says something useful about the component majors. And unsurprisingly, when you look at the component majors, the same effect is dramatically apparent. It's like looking at "total household debt". It encompasses a massive amount of things, from mortgages to student loans to credit cards, from people with 100x assets/debt to people with negative net worth. But it's still possible to look at the aggregate figure and understand something rough about the magnitude of indebtedness in the country.