20 Highest Paying Degrees

20 Highest Paying Degrees

According to the PayScale survey of 'Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary', the highest-paying college degree is petroleum engineering (with a median starting salary of $97,900 and mid-career median pay of $155,000), followed by Chemical Engineering (No. 2).

The annual PayScale survey results show that the top 5 degrees in terms of salary were in the engineering field. Students who major in biology, environmental Science, fashion design, architecture, philosophy, urban planning, food science and telecommunications are among those that earn higher pay than business majors.

Following are the top 20 highest paying college degrees, ranked by average mid-career earnings:

Petroleum engineering $155,000
Chemical engineering $109,000
Electrical engineering $103,000
Material science & engineering $103,000
Aerospace engineering $102,000
Physics $101,000
Applied mathematics $98,600
Computer engineering $101,000
Nuclear engineering $97,800
Biomedical engineering $97,800
Economics $94,700
Mechanical engineering $94,500
Statistics $93,800
Industrial engineering $93,100
Civil engineering $90,200
Mathematics $89,900
Environmental engineering $88,600
Management Information Systems $88,200
Software engineering $87,800
Finance $87,300
Source: PayScale (2011-2012)