Those are national salaries - the numbers change when you compare programmers in high cost regions to other professions in the same region. For instance, the n

Those are national salaries - the numbers change when you compare programmers in high cost regions to other professions in the same region. For instance, the national average for software developers is quite a bit higher than for registered nurses, but when you consider bay area salaries, registered nurses earn at the median slightly more than software developers (in San Jose, it is 122k vs 116k, check US News Best Jobs for data). As for law - the average salary for a lawyer working in San Jose is $183,000 a year (http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/lawyer/salary http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/lawyer/salary). It's true that lawyers have to go to three years of law school, but people don't fail out of typical pre-law majors like history or political science and major in CS or engineering because they;re easier, and plenty of programmers have grad degrees. Also, attrition rates in elite graduate engineering schools are vastly higher than they are at elite law or med schools. The attrition rate for many science PhD programs is 50%. Engineering is a little better at 35% or so. Attrition rates for elite law and medical schools tend to be below 0.5%. It's a tough comparison, because technically, you don't need any degree at all to be a programmer (you don't even need to know how to program, there's no licensing). But to graduate from an ABET accredited program and get a grad degree, even just an MS rather than a PhD? I'd say it's a much tougher program than history major followed by law school. Like I said in a different post, the "shortage" of engineers appears to be a rational response to salary and career prospects. Engineering and programming are difficult jogs, and they pays less than people with this sort of academic inclination and propensity for hard, focused work can earn elsewhere. There is absolutely no need for government intervention to solve a "shortage" of programmers or engineers.