STEM Graduates: Salary Expectations Fall Short of Actual Salaries

Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals
April 15, 2015

When it comes to starting salaries, do the starting salary expectations of students earning degrees in the highly prized STEM fields align with reality?

No—but not because students majoring in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics-related disciplines have overly lofty expectations.

In fact, results from NACE’s forthcoming Spring 2015 Salary Survey show that STEM graduates tend to underestimate the going rate for their abilities. Among the five STEM fields cited here, the overall average salaries exceed the expectations students reported through NACE’s 2014 Student Survey. (See Figure 1.)

Those majoring in the biological sciences come closest to the mark. Their expected average salary ($32,427) falls just 2.5 percent below the overall actual average ($33,248). However, graduates in the other areas appear to have little understanding of what the market will pay. Chemistry majors do the poorest job in estimating their worth: Their average expectation is more than 50 percent below the actual average starting salary.

The actual average starting salaries cited in the Spring issue of Salary Survey were reported through the national Class of 2014 First-Destination Survey; salary data were provided by more than 140 schools for more than 45,000 graduates. The Spring 2015 report provides final salary data for the Class of 2014.