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The Bachelor's Degrees With The Highest Salary Potential

This article is more than 8 years old.

As summer draws to a close and college students head--or return--to campuses around the country, many will be faced with the dilemma of choosing a major. Which fields of study guarantee students healthy starting salaries that will continue to grow?

As part of their 2015 - 2016 College Salary Report, Payscale.com asked survey respondents whose culminating degree is a bachelor’s, and who graduated from schools in the U.S., work full-time in the U.S., and are not on active military duty to answer questions about their current employment and compensation.

As in previous years, engineering majors dominate the list, with 15 of the top 25 majors on this list focused on a particular branch of engineering.

Maintaining its place at the top of this STEM-heavy list is Petroleum Engineering. Careers associated with this degree, described by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as belonging to those who "design and develop methods for extracting oil and gas from deposits below the earth’s surface," pay early career wages of just over $100,000 per year, and mid-career wages of $168,000. Nuclear Engineering comes in second, with mid-career wages of $121,000.

Actuarial Mathematics, Chemical Engineering, and Electronics and Communications Engineering round out the top five, with occupations associated with those degrees all offering mid-career wages that top $115,000.

Government, tied in 20th place, is the lone non-STEM major among the top 25 occupations on this list. (Economics & Finance is included in the top 25, but while Economics is routinely categorized as a social science, careers associated with Finance are often included under the STEM umbrella.)

Further down the list of 319 majors, areas of study as varied as Meteorology, Urban & Regional Planning, and Film Studies all make the cut, with associated occupations offering mid-career earnings in the $70,000 to $90,000 range.

In pictures: The 25 Bachelor's Degrees With The Highest Salary Potential 

To view Payscale's full list of Bachelor's Degrees by Salary Potential, click here. 

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