The average starting salary offer to the college Class of 2010 is down approximately 1 percent compared with the average earned by the Class of 2009, according to a new study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).
NACE’s Fall 2010 Salary Survey shows that the overall average offer to Class of 2010 bachelor’s degree graduates stands at $48,288, compared with $48,633 offered to the Class of 2009. This represents a drop of 0.7 percent.
“Despite the drop in the overall average, the good news is that the decreases in starting salaries appear to have leveled off,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. “In terms of starting salaries, this is the most encouraging news we’ve had since the market started tumbling in Fall 2008.”
As a group, business majors’ average salary offer remains nearly unchanged ($46,735 in 2009 vs. $46,672 in 2010), and many of the business disciples saw little movement in their average offer.
For example, accounting majors saw their average offer dip less than 1 percent for an average of $48,378, while offers to finance majors held steady at $49,160.
The average offer to business administration majors fell 1.4 percent to $43,991. Marketing graduates experienced the same 1.4 percent drop; their average offer now stands at $41,670.
Bucking that trend are economics majors, with an average starting salary of $51,698, up 4.2 percent compared with last year at this time.
Among the technical disciplines, the average offer to computer science majors fell 1.6 percent to $60,473, while the average offer to information science graduates dipped 0.7 percent to $52,530.
As a group, engineering majors saw their overall average starting salary offer drop 1.7 percent, from $59,670 to $58,669. Among the specific engineering majors that saw decreases were chemical engineering (1.2 percent for an average of $64,889), civil engineering (1.8 percent for an average of $51,321), computer engineering (0.7 percent for an average of $60,396), electrical engineering (1.6 percent for an average of $59,512), and mechanical engineering (1.9 percent for an average of $58,110). Still, engineering majors account for four of the top-five paid majors for 2009-10 bachelor’s degree graduates. (See Figure 1.)
The average starting salary offer to liberal arts graduates—as a group—dipped 3 percent from last year to $35,508. Salary offers to sociology majors climbed 3.1 percent to $35,357 and history majors saw a slight increase of 0.7 percent to $38,731. Meanwhile, offers to English majors dropped 1.8 percent to $35,946 and offers to psychology majors fell 6.7 percent to $32,260.
The Fall 2010 Salary Survey is the final report on salaries for the Class of 2010. NACE is currently gathering salary information for the college Class of 2011 and will release results through four reports, the first of which will be released in February 2011.
