How much is a computer science degree worth?

The median annual wage of a college grad with a computer, math or statistics degree is over $70,000. This is better than the vast majority of college majors, and compares really well with the median annual wage of high school grads, which is under $40,000. The conclusions are clear:

• Go to college
• Major in computers, math, statistics, architecture or engineering
• Otherwise, you’re screwed.
• Well, all right, majoring in education or psychology leads to crappy salaries, but at least it’s better than being just a high school grad.

Here is the data:

This is a test!

Trigger Warning! From here to the end of this post could trigger feelings of inadequacy among certain people. Others could feel anger towards the author, causing potentially dangerous heightening of the pulse rate. Others could feel that the author is hopelessly arrogant or elitist, resulting in generally uncomfortable feelings. So read on at your own risk.

This post is a test of whether you’re qualified to be a top computer programmer, or an outstanding achiever in any technical/quantitative field. The thoughts in this post up to this point summarize what the article accompanying the chart intends you to conclude, and what most people will think on looking at the chart.

The author of the article clearly failed the test.

Did you?

Understanding the data

If you haven’t already, look at the chart again. Note the big, fat explanation at the top. The endpoints of the lines represent 25^th and 75^th percentiles. The 75^th percentile for high school grads is about $50,000. This means that a quarter of high school grads have salaries above that. The 25^th percentile for computer etc. grads is roughly $50,000, perhaps a little more. Which means that a quarter of the computer etc. grads make less than $50,000. In summary: a quarter of high school grads have salaries that are greater than a quarter of college grads with degrees in computers, math or statistics. Read that sentence again. Get it? Did you figure it out before reading this?

Implications for Hiring Computer Programmers

I hope you’ve just seen why, when I’ve hired people, I really haven’t given a %^* about their education or their degree – in fact, the higher the education and the fancier the degree, the more concerned I am to weed out the folks with bad attitudes, the ones who have been granted the knowledge and the certification to prove it, and want to spend their lives resting on and/or milking their degrees. Some of the best programmers I’ve met in decades of programming did not have college degrees. Most of the ones who are less than excellent and/or have “risen” in management are experts at glancing at things and reaching the wrong conclusions. Like most people do when looking at the salary chart above. FWIW, here are some good examples of drop-outs who did pretty well. Including the Wright Brothers -- after all, how hard can inventing the airplane be?

The people who are best in computing combine big-picture, visual/conceptual abilities with an utterly uncompromising attention to detail. Computer programs shouldn’t have even a single byte wrong, and the bytes should be selected and arranged according to a deep conceptual understanding of the problem at hand. Amateurs and pretenders don’t do well at either of these jobs, much less in combination.

Conclusion

If you care about attracting, selecting and retaining the very best software people, you would be well advised to alter your hiring practices as required to select the people who ... get ready for it ... can actually do the work! Really well! Having degrees or whatever is not nearly as correlated to that outcome as you might think.