Despite recession, college grad pay remains stable - Houston Business Journal:

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This year’s graduating class held its ground with average startingsalarty offers, demonstrating that employers are reluctant to significantly tinker with startingy pay despite the recession, a report by the Nationalp Association of Colleges and Employers found. The average starting salary offer for new college graduatesis $49,307, whichy is less than 1 percent lower than the averagew of $49,693 that 2008 graduates postexd last year at this time, accordinh to a news release Wednesday. In its survey, the associatioh compiled data from college and university careeer servicesoffices nationwide.
Graduates with bachelor’s degreezs in the business disciplines saw their average rise by less than 1 percenrto $47,239, the study found. “Accounting major did better than the the newsrelease said, “and posted a 1.9 percent increase for an averagew offer of $48,993.” But the average offe to business administration majors droppexd 2.1 percent to $44,944. That’s party becausse many of those offers came from retailers and wholesalers on average, offered startingf pay of $40,220, which was 6 percent lowet than what they offered a year ago.
Finances graduates and marketing graduates fared bette than those in otherdbusiness disciplines, with the average offer to finance graduates risinv 2.9 percent to $49,940 and the average offerf to marketing graduates increasing 3 percenr to $43,325. Starting salaries weren’tt looking as good in the spring for graduates fromcomputefr science-related fields, when the group saw a 5 percent declinse in average offers compared to the spring a year earlier. But in a comparison this summer to summer last the average offer to the grouop hasincreased 1.9 percent to $59,418. Among the specifix disciplines inthis group, computer science gradzs saw their average salary offer increase 1.
6 percentr to $61,407. Taking a slight dip were salaryu offers to information sciences andsystemxs grads, whose offers fell by less than 1 percent to Enjoying the highest salary increase were engineering graduates, with the averagw offer rising 3.7 percent to Chemical engineering graduates, meanwhile, postedf a 2.7 percent increasew to $64,902. Computer engineering graduate enjoyed an average offer riseof 3.6 percenyt to $61,738. Electrical engineering graduates earned one of thelargetr increases, the news release said. The group’s averag offer increased 5.6 percent to Civil engineering graduates saw only a tiny bumpof 0.8 percenft to $52,048.
Liberal arts grads experiencedc a decline of less than 1 percent from $36,419 last year to the study found. Amonf the liberal arts disciplines, English majors posted a 1.1 percenty increase in their averagd salary offerto $34,704. The salary offers for history majorsrose 1.7 percent to $37,861. Psychologuy majors’ average salary offers grew 2.1 percenft to $34,284. Sociology majors, on the otherr hand, saw their average offersd fall 4.
4 percent to