Certification Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 41) Perhaps not surprisingly, the salary that a degree is likely to earn can vary from school to school, as well. A big factor here is whether the school’s computer science department is in its engineering school. “Computer science in some campuses is located in engineering, so kids have to make all the pre-engineering requirements to get in, and in some campuses it’s not, so the math requirements are a lot different,” said Phil Gardner, director of research for the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. MSU has IT students who are not in engineering, which has meant growth for its computer science department. “Our booming programs — and I still consider these kids IT kids — are in our gaming program and in multimedia design,” Gardner said. “The problem is they don’t pay as much because they don’t come out with that engineering certificate. And they may or may not be doing some really high-level programming.” He also said the highest-ranked IT majors at MSU in terms of salary potential are computer engineering, followed by software design, then programming. “In computer engineering, they’re actually designing hardware and doing the design stuff on the nuts and bolts of IT technology,” Gardner said. “By far, the salaries for computer engineers are higher because there are so few of them. In the greater scheme of things, they’re just harder to find. And so they come up on top, and then the design people writing and developing new software (and that would merge into gaming, depending on how good they are) would come in second.” In programming, Gardner said, salaries are all over the map because programmers can fill a variety of positions, from general programming to technological support. “They get paid well, but in the pecking order it’s still down there,” he said. IT design majors place after programming in salary potential. “That’s entry-level, and once you get out and establish your reputation and salary, everything just depends on your individual performance,” Gardner said. The dominance of computer engineering is a relatively new trend, one reflective of the increasing dominance of technology in society. “The emergence of computer engineering, which wasn’t even a field 10 years ago, has certainly put them out in front,” Gardner said. “Michigan State has a program, but they only take 10 kids a year — they’re highly selective, and every one of them walks out of here with $80,000, $90,000 a year.” Meanwhile, however, the diffusion of technology has allowed all kinds of majors to evolve into skills that revolve around technology. “What happens is, as the technologies get adapted in other areas like communication, arts, media, English and so forth, these kids get adept and see that they can become IT people without having to go through engineering,” Gardner said. “The gaming program’s new, and the redesigning of all these multimedia-type design programs is new because kids demand that and sell themselves as communication experts. Companies will buy that kind of stuff. They don’t have to pay them top dollar [like they do for] December 2007 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 41
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.