Women Are Majoring In The Lower-Paying STEM Fields

By Ben Casselman

In my article on college majors, I point out that it’s a mistake to treat STEM majors — science, technology, engineering and math — as a single category. Majoring in technology, engineering or math does generally lead to a well-paying job. But the sciences, especially life sciences, are a different story. The median salary for a recent graduate with a degree in biology, for example, is just $33,400, putting the major solidly in the bottom half of all fields. (These figures are for graduates 27 or younger with a full-time, year-round job and no graduate degree.)

There’s another difference between the “S” and “TEM” parts of STEM: gender.

Women make up almost exactly half of all recent STEM graduates. But they make up less than a quarter of all graduates in the 20 highest-paying STEM fields, and more than two-thirds of graduates in the 20 lowest-paying majors.

Read the rest here.