New data from College Scorecard gives us a glimpse into the earnings and debt for recent graduates in their first year or two after leaving school. Shown is the distribution of the medians reported for all schools with graduates in the given program/award level.
This section is informed by household surveys collected for the American Community Survey (ACS). For each person in the households surveyed, we learn about their college major (if applicable), final educational attainment, age, occupation, salary, and more. Using the ACS data lets us share something about what financial and career outcomes people can expect after majoring in a particular field in college.
Within our program pages, Ididio details over 1700 programs. However, the ACS surveys only report on 170 college major degrees. There is no published crosswalk between the programs and degrees. Some of the programs we describe are mostly offered as certificates or graduate programs, and don't make sense as college majors. For the remaining programs, we created a mapping to the best-fitting ACS degree designation.
We placed specialized computer programming within the ACS computer programming & data processing degree designation, which contains a total of 3 programs.
All of the data that follows is for individuals who earned a bachelor's degree with a major in the degree computer programming & data processing. While we compile data on those who also received graduate education, unfortunately ACS does not record the subject area for graduate degrees.
Does getting a bachelor's degree in computer programming & data processing lead to a secure job? The donut chart shows the percentage computer programming & data processing majors who are working along with a broad view of where they work. We note:
- Self-employed workers include those working in a family-owned business.
- Government workers can be in local, state or federal governments.
Technically, about 18.5% of computer programming & data processing graduates are currently not working. However, only 3.6% are classified as "unemployed," while 14.9% are "not in the workforce." Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing whether people are out of the workforce for personal reasons or because they have been unable to find work for an extended period.
This chart lets you see whether computer programming & data processing majors have better unemployment rates than bachelor's graduates from other fields. In the shaded box plot, the percentage of unemployed with this degree is shown in blue, along with the distribution of the percentage of unemployed graduates for each bachelor's degree field.
How does the median (middle) salary for computer programming & data processing majors compare to the median salaries for other majors? The chart below compares the median salaries for all bachelor's graduates by major. Here and everywhere that we discuss salary, we limit the population to those with bachelor's degrees who report working at least 35 hours a week and are aged 65 and younger.
Above we compared the median salaries earned across college majors. Now we'll view the full salary range for computer programming & data processing majors. The charts below show the full distribution of salaries for this degree alone, with a look at how the type of employer might affect that salary. This salary includes all people who may also have received graduate education in this or any field. You can tease out the importance of graduate education in the last tab in the section.
Note that we do not include salary data when the survey standard error is higher than 20% of the salary. Therefore, some categories may be missing or may only provide partial salary ranges. To provide salary breakdowns, we have aggregated ACS person-level career survey responses by career, gender, race, age, and other factors. These graphics reflect the results of our aggregations, and are useful for identifying trends. A careful statistical study of the impact of these characteristics on salaries would correct for other factors that could be contributing to salary differences.
The donut chart shows the gender balance for all people with a bachelor's degree in computer programming & data processing. In the graphs that follow, we'll explore how these percentages compare to other bachelor's holders, and we'll also investigate the impact of gender on pay.
How does the gender balance change according to college major? In the chart below, we see that computer programming & data processing has more men than most other degrees.
The chart below shows the distribution of salaries by gender of computer programming & data processing majors who are working 35 or more hours and are 65 or younger. If salaries are balanced for men and women, the blue and pink bars will be about the same. Many programs' graduates struggle with men's wages higher at all points of the salary distribution, including significantly higher top salaries.
For computer programming & data processing graduates, men generally earn 14% more than women. This is better than many: 87% of programs have graduates with higher salary inequities.
The ages of people in the US with a bachelor's degree in computer programming & data processing can give us a hint about whether this degree is in-fashion or out-of-fashion. A higher percentage of older people with a degree suggests that newer degree options have edged out this degree for recent graduates. Likewise, a higher percentage of younger people with a degree may suggest that this degree has become more popular in recent years.
What entry-level pay should you expect in your first job, and is the mid-level pay significantly higher? Below we see salary distributions by age group for computer programming & data processing graduates who are working 35 or more hours weekly. Is there room for advancement in careers that stem from this degree?
Note that we do not include salary data when the survey standard error is higher than 20% of the salary. Therefore, some categories may be missing or may only provide partial salary ranges. To provide salary breakdowns, we have aggregated ACS person-level career survey responses by career, gender, race, age, and other factors. These graphics reflect the results of our aggregations, and are useful for identifying trends. A careful statistical study of the impact of these characteristics on salaries would correct for other factors that could be contributing to salary differences.
Can computer programming & data processing majors earn a high salary without obtaining a graduate degree? Below, we dive into the prevalence of graduate degrees for computer programming & data processing majors, and we explore how much a graduate degree can be expected to increase salaries. Among all specialized computer programming completions reported last year, 67% were at the bachelor's level or higher, including 28% at the graduate level.
The donut shows the degree levels awarded in specialized computer programming today. Now we'll use American Community Survey (ACS) data and look at all workers in the US who majored in computer programming & data processing when in college.
We know that about 18% computer programming & data processing majors chose to also earn a graduate degree (but we do not know the graduate field of study). The percentage of computer programming & data processing majors also earned a graduate degree is near the middle in comparison to other fields.
We saw above that 18% earned a graduate degree after earning a bachelor's in computer programming & data processing, but was this necessary for earning a good salary? We can see this answer in two ways. First, we can see the salary distribution for people with a bachelor's in computer programming & data processing by their highest education attained. Remember, we only know the field for the bachelor's degree; the graduate degree can be in any field.
Note that we do not include salary data when the survey standard error is higher than 20% of the salary. Therefore, some categories may be missing or may only provide partial salary ranges. To provide salary breakdowns, we have aggregated ACS person-level career survey responses by career, gender, race, age, and other factors. These graphics reflect the results of our aggregations, and are useful for identifying trends. A careful statistical study of the impact of these characteristics on salaries would correct for other factors that could be contributing to salary differences.
The second way that we can explore the impact of higher education on salary is to compare median salaries for workers with each level of education. We measure the percentage increase over the bachelor's salary that each higher degree achieved, and contrast that with similar measurements for other fields.
Sure, we think a higher degree would almost always help salary, but are there some majors that "need" a higher degree (in either the same or a new field) more than others in order to reach their earnings potential?
As we explained at the start of the previous section "Salary and Employment for Majors", the career data in all of these tabs is supported by the American Community Survey (ACS), which provides career information based on the broad degree computer programming & data processing. For of the career statistics we report here, we consider all bachelor-holders in specialized computer programming and 2 other programs to fall under the ACS data we aggregated for the computer programming & data processing degree.
Here we look at ACS survey respondents across the US with a bachelor's degree in computer programming & data processing, and we see their top careers. You can explore the salary distributions for all people in those careers, as well as the typical education help by workers in that job. If you see ** before the job name, that tells you that the Department of Education recommends this job for people with a degree in specialized computer programming. We did not find always find a strong correlation between that advice and where people were working.
Take a minute with this sankey diagram, and use your mouse/touch to explore. You can follow the top ten jobs held by computer programming & data processing graduates, and then, in turn, you can see the largest 10 degrees hired by each of those careers. We hope this gives you a glimpse at where you can most realistically hope to get a job with this degree, but also see alternatives for the same employment options. It's worth noting that for many degrees, the top ten jobs don't account for even half of the graduates. The data warns us / encourages us that a degree is only one piece of the puzzle that determines where we land.
What jobs are especially seeking you out? The previous section let you explore the top ten jobs for people who earn bachelor's degrees in this field. Now we turn the tables a bit. What jobs have computer programming & data processing as one of the top ten majors they hire? Take this with a grain of salt, though, since some majors have more than 100,000 annual graduates and others have only a few thousand. Maybe employers would hire more of certain low-number majors if they could be found. In the bottom Sankey box, we show you the proportion of computer programming & data processing majors that are accounted for by the top 10 jobs -- there are a myriad of other options for most majors.
We've created a list of schools that offer this program for the level you select. We've also chosen a few facts about each school that give you an idea of the educational quality each school might offer:
Student-Faculty Ratio: A small number of students per full-time instructor suggests individual attention for each student and an up-to-date curriculum.
Satisfaction Rate: A high percentage of returning first-year students should correlate with satisfaction (schools call this their retention rate).
Repayment Rate: A high repayment rate means most alumni earn enough to make progress repaying loans within 7 years of leaving.
We also show the total enrollment for the school as measured by full-time-equivalent (FTE) students enrolled annually. You can filter the list by award level and by state. Clicking on any table headers will sort the table by that column, and clicking on any row sends you to Ididio's school profile.
Specialized Computer Programming is part of a larger collection of programs: Computer Sciences and Information Technology. Is there a different program that's close to Specialized Computer Programming that might be a better match for your interests? You can use this table to see a little about the programs that fall under this umbrella. If you click on any of the table headers, that will sort the table by that column, or click on a row and see Ididio's profile for that program.
