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Evolution, ecology, and biodiversity majors end up with a mid-career salary of $100,000.
- Some jobs pay you well, while others allow you to feel like your work makes a difference in the world. But these two things don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive.
- Using data from PayScale, we found which majors led to jobs that paid well and where workers also felt like their work mattered.
- Most majors that lead to well-paid and satisfying jobs are engineering-related: Marine engineering, biomedical engineering, and aeronautical engineering top the list.
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There are jobs that pay you well. Then there are jobs that make a difference in peoples' lives while making you feel personally fulfilled. While many of us think these categories are mutually exclusive by necessity, they don't always have to be.
Using data from compensation platform PayScale's 2018 College Salary Report, we found which majors made workers feel like their work mattered and paid them handsomely. The report found average salaries as well as a "high meaning" rate - the percentage of college grads who say their work makes the world a better place - using worker surveys.
To determine which majors had both high job satisfaction and high salaries, we tallied the top 20 majors with an annual mid-career salary above $100,000 that also had a "high meaning" rate above 50%.
Here are the majors to choose if you want to land a lucrative gig that'll pay you to change the world.