Following up on the post about Most Lucrative College Majors and this follow up post, see this from Yahoo News:
Graduates with technical skills do well in the short term. But in the long run, it’s the folks who move into management positions that take home the biggest paychecks. Top earners who majored in economics or finance have higher salaries than any other major, followed by chemical engineering, math, and physics, according to PayScale.com.
“If you can take technical skills and turn them into something entrepreneurial,” you have the chance to make a top salary, says Russell Miller, managing director at Executive Compensation Advisors in New York. “Lots of people who graduate from MIT start up their own technology firms.”
Regarding engineering schools:
Interestingly, median starting salaries for alumni of MIT, California Institute of Technology, and Harvey Mudd College, which have strong engineering programs, are the highest in the country ($75,500, $72,200, and $71,800). But the salaries do not get as high for midcareer professionals from those schools as they do for graduates of the elite liberal arts schools.