Five Highest-Paying Bachelor’s Degrees. Earning your bachelor’s degree tends to lead to higher salaries and lower unemployment rates than high school graduates experience, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). However, some bachelor’s degrees can lead to more high-paying jobs than others, either at the outset of your career or by the midpoint of it.
For example, the most popular majors, which include business, health professions, engineering, and biomedical sciences, all tend to lead to high-paying jobs after graduation [2]. But liberal arts majors typically achieve a comparable salary by the mid-point of their career. In other words, they may make less to start, but will eventually earn as much as their STEM counterparts thanks to the transferable nature of their skill set, according to New York Times [3].
In this article, we’ll go over 14 high-paying jobs that require less than five years of experience, and the six high-paying management tracks you can typically explore after gaining at least five years of experience.
Five Highest-Paying Bachelor’s Degrees
As Coursera well noted, not all bachelor’s degrees are equal in terms of pay. If you thought that bachelor’s degrees within STEM fields unmistakeably have a tendency to pay more, earlier in your career, than those within the liberal arts, then you’re absolutely right.
According to research and analysis conducted in October 2023 by BestColleges.com, alongside up-to-date salary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, five of the highest-paying bachelor’s degrees you should consider in 2024, include:
1. Petroleum Engineering
The average salary for a petroleum engineer is $131,800. This job involves not only extracting oil and natural resources such as gas, but also developing new processes and tools for their extraction from underground reservoirs.
2. Aeronautics and Astronautics
Roles within aeronautics and astronautics include avionics and aerospace engineering, aircraft maintenance technician, space mission planner, and satellite engineer. The average salary for roles within this field is $126,880, with a projected 6% job growth rate—faster than average
3. Actuarial Mathematics
Actuaries focus on analyzing risk and the financial costs associated with them, using their in-depth expertise within mathematics and statistics, and financial modelling. This role is critical to industries such as insurance, real estate, and the administration of government benefits.
Actuaries are one of the most in-demand roles currently, with a much faster than average 23% increase forecasted up to 2032, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average salary for this type of role is $113,990.
4. Computer Science
High-paying jobs that you can land with a bachelor’s degree in computer science include web developer, software developer, app developer, and senior software developer. You can also specialize and progress further within machine learning, data science, and/or artificial intelligence for even higher earning potential.
There is a projected 25% surge in demand for computer science roles—which can be understandable, due to the AI boom—and you can expect to make $124,200 on average.
5. Business Computing
A bachelor’s degree in business computing typically tends to merge computer science fundamentals from a commercial perspective, and a business administration or management degree.
This “best of both worlds” approach is particularly useful if you have a keen interest in both business and technology, but are not certain on your career path yet. Or perhaps, you wish to be a tech entrepreneur, and want to learn technology as well as business management and technology applications in the business context.
One example of a high-paying job that could benefit from a bachelor’s degree in business computing is that of an information security analyst, with a projected 32% increase in job demand and boasting average salaries of $112,000.
Most importantly, when evaluating which degree to pursue, remember that there is no magic in pursuing a particular course of study, although some obviously pay more than others, as noted above.
There is hardly any tangible benefit in a paper or letters after your name.