 the highest paying technology degrees. That's what we're going to be talking about today but before we get into that if you could just gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel we talk about personal finance, college degrees, careers and opportunities that are going to lead you to success and we also go over how you can avoid some of the common financial traps that so many people fall for. Now if you're new here and that sounds like something that interests you and you haven't done it already go ahead hit the subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss an opportunity. Now with that out of the way let's jump right into it. I've already made several videos on technology degrees which ones I think are the best, which ones I think are the worst and in those videos I evaluated the technology degrees with the full picture in mind. I looked at all kinds of different things like job satisfaction, future growth, salary, etc. However in this video I'm just going to be looking at salary. I'm going to be looking at the technology related degrees that have the highest pay. So let's jump in with the first one on the list which is going to be computer information systems. So this one is going to be all about information and data but specifically we're going to be talking about the systems that are used to collect and analyze data and information. And if you didn't know yet data actually passed oil as being one of the most valuable commodities in the entire world. So with a computer information systems degree you can expect to make around $56,000 a year in your first five years after graduating and then your mid-career pay which is basically 10 years after graduating and on you're going to be making around $97,000 a year. Now one career you could go for and there are a lot out there but one of them is going to be a database administrator and according to BLS they make around $93,000 a year there's 132,000 jobs available and it's growing much faster than average at 10% which means in the next 10 years about 12,800 jobs are going to pop up. So when it comes to technology related degrees especially if you're not familiar with technology it can be hard to tell the difference. It's almost like they all seem to do the exact same thing and so I really like to try to explain the difference between the different degrees. So generally speaking when it comes to data and information a lot of the time this is going to be collected and it's going to be used by different companies to make very important decisions that are going to help them in the future. So an obvious example of data would be let's say you're somebody who's very interested in ferrets okay you're a huge fan of ferrets. Most people are not big fans of ferrets so an advertiser would be wasting their money if they bought up ad space to show that person like a ferret collar or a ferret outfit or something like that. However if you are the world's biggest fan of ferrets and an advertiser bought up ad space on your Facebook or your YouTube you would be very likely to buy it. Now I'm just making this up off the top of my head but you might be 100 times more likely to buy that product than the average person maybe even more than that you might be 300 times more likely and so let's say they spend $100 on just random people they would probably get like let's say $100 back versus spending $100 on people who really like ferrets they might get $30,000 back that is a huge difference and that is why data is so valuable. Now number nine on the list is going to be information technology management so this one is going to be all about managing the information technology within an organization so that they can carry out their day to day tasks. With this degree you can expect to make around $59,000 a year starting out and $103,000 in mid-career pay. There are a ton of different career paths you could go down but one thing you could do is you could become a computer systems analyst they make around $90,000 a year there's 632,000 jobs available it's growing at 7% which is faster than average meaning during the next 10 years there's going to be 46,000 jobs that open up so IT guys the way to think about them is they're taking care of the day to day needs within a company so they're going to be installing software on computers they're going to be making sure the computers get updated making sure that they have good computers that can actually handle all the software that's going to be installed they're going to make sure that the email server is not going to go down if anybody has any issues with anything they're probably going to be the ones who get called and they're going to fix any bugs or issues that people have they might not directly lead to a company making money in every case but without them there's no way that a company would exist in the first place next one on the list is going to be information security and assurance this one is going to be about the management storage and protection of data and information remember how I told you how valuable information can be before that's why there's tons of hackers out there that will try to get at a company's information so they can steal that data and then sell it to somebody else or maybe even use it themselves these are the people that are going to be stopping that from happening with this degree you can expect to make around $60,000 a year in your first five years and 103,000 in mid-career pay one career path you could go down is becoming an information security analyst they make around $99,000 a year there's 131,000 jobs available it's growing at an absolute ridiculous clip of 31% which means in the next 10 years there's going to be 40,900 new jobs created now this one is honestly very similar to cybersecurity and there's going to be a lot of overlap there and you've seen these degree programs and this career in general get extremely popular lately especially after we've seen all these scandals with different companies getting hacked so for instance we had Target getting hacked a few years ago Equifax got hacked a bunch of people's data got leaked and that resulted in those companies losing millions and millions of dollars if they would have just invested in some people that were you know cybersecurity experts information security experts that probably never would have happened it's not just in the public sector where people are getting jobs the US government is also hiring tons of people who have these skills as well now one thing i'll say about this one is that it is a pretty rare degree and so some of these numbers might be a little bit off just because the sample size isn't big enough on top of that it is a little bit too niche and specific which is a common problem that you see with some of these technology related degrees so you really want to make sure that you know exactly what career you're going for and you know exactly what you want to do before you decide to pursue one of these types of majors if you don't you might box yourself in too much and if you decide you want to go for another career it might not translate as well as you would want it to the next one on the list is going to be a management information systems degree now this one is kind of like a it degree mixed in with a little bit of a computer science degree mixed in with a business degree so technically management information systems is a business degree but it also has a whole lot of technology stuff that you learn as well and this is one of my favorite degrees it ranks very high on my list with this one you can expect to make around $61,000 a year in your early career and $107,000 a year in mid-career pay now there are a ton of different careers and a ton of different degrees that you can go for with this one that's the great thing about a lot of these technology related degrees especially the ones that are a little bit more general is there are a lot of different options there for you one career path you could go down is becoming a computer network architect they make around $112,000 a year there's 160,000 jobs available and it's growing at 5% which is faster than average and that means over the next 10 years there's going to be 8,000 new jobs that pop up so you could probably say that this one is like maybe 40% business 40% information technology and 20% computer science and if you know what you're going for you can make it more technology oriented so maybe it would be like 30 or 40% computer science or you could make it more business oriented it's very rare that you see someone who has technology skills as well as really good business fundamental skills as well and so if you can have both of those together this one is great it's also one of the best degrees you can possibly get if you want to become an entrepreneur especially in the technology industry because it teaches you basically everything you need to know it's almost like having training wheels for becoming an entrepreneur next one on the list is going to be software engineering and this one is technically kind of like an engineering slash technology related degree it's almost like a combination of both so you are going to be bringing an engineering approach to solving problems to the development and creation of software now with a software engineering degree you're going to be making around 71 000 a year in the first five years and 114 000 in mid-career pay now again there's a ton of different careers you can go into but let's say you want to become a quality assurance analyst you'd be making around 111 000 a year there's about 1.4 million jobs available if you combine that with software developer now software engineering technically speaking is more focused on building software so designing and building software whereas computer science is more focused on kind of like the theoretical and deeper understanding of the mathematics behind computers and software now from my research i've seen that some computer science engineers depending on what school you go to they're a little bit too theoretical and you don't get as much hands on experience with different types of languages and frameworks that are actually going to be used in the real world whereas software engineering tends to be a lot more practical they're going to teach you stuff that you're going to need to know in the real world and so you're probably going to be a little bit more prepared for a job right after graduating college with that being said computer science does seem to be a little bit more flexible than software engineering so for instance a lot of computer science majors actually end up going into information technology now when it comes to the difference between a software engineer and a software developer basically in theory a software engineer you can almost think of them as like an architect so they're the ones who actually design the building and then the software developer is the person who actually goes in and they're the foreman for the crew that actually builds the building itself so they're the ones who do most of the coding and the software engineer tells them what type of code that they need to write that's in theory though in reality in a lot of different companies they're basically the same exact position and they do a lot of the same stuff next one on the list is going to be a computer science degree this is a fantastic one i've talked about this quite a bit on the channel with this one you're going to expect to make around $70,000 a year right off the bat and 116,000 in mid-career pay one career path you could go down and there's ton of them is you could become a software developer they make around 107,000 a year there's 1.4 million jobs available and they're growing at 22% which is much faster than average meaning over the next 10 years there's going to be an extra 316,000 jobs that open up now this is one of my highest ranking degrees it's a fantastic one for you to get into however getting this degree and then doing absolutely nothing else and not sending out any applications or anything like that you're not going to just have somebody knocking on your door wanting to give you a job you still have to put some work into it especially depending on what program you go to there are more and more programs out there that are opening up that are kind of like scammy type schools where they don't really teach you anything but then they give you the degree at the end of the day and so companies hire you and they're like you literally don't know how to do anything you know this is a problem so you do need to make sure to work on your skills do projects try to get internships if you can get some real life real work experience never hurts to network and also especially for getting your very first job the area that you're in is going to matter quite a bit so you can definitely get a job anywhere just because of the fact that a lot of these jobs out there are going to be remote but it's preferable for you to get a job in a specific area where there's a ton of companies that are hiring for software developers get your first few years of experience and then after that you're going to be golden number four on the list is going to be computer or electrical engineering now computer engineering is a type of electrical engineering that's why I kind of decided to combine them for the purposes of this video so in computer engineering you are going to get some of the software side of things so there is going to be kind of you know some software engineering some computer science in there but you're also going to focus on the hardware side of things as well so computer engineering grads are going to make around seventy four thousand dollars a year in the first five years after graduating and mid career pay is a hundred and twenty three thousand one career path you could go down is becoming a computer hardware engineer and they're going to make a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars a year there's seventy one thousand jobs available it's growing at two percent which is pretty slow and over the next ten years there's going to be eleven hundred jobs that open up so if you love technology but your interest kind of lies with the hardware side of things then this might be a great choice for you so let's say you're really interested in motherboards processors you know creating phones or anything like that maybe working on different electrical systems that go into a car this one would be a great one to look into and with engineering degrees they're so good that a lot of the time it really doesn't matter what engineering degree you have it just matters that you have one because companies love to hire people that have an engineering degree but it's very likely that you would go for a technology related career just because there's so much opportunity in the tech industry a very similar degree to computer engineering is going to be computer systems engineering and that's the next one on the list so this one is similar but you're going to have a little bit more of a focus on the math side of things as well as the analysis and computer science side of things you're also going to be focusing on different systems of computers so maybe an entire system that's within an organization versus working on a single computer that might be mass produced now at this degree you can expect to make around $74,000 a year at first and mid career pay is going to be 124,000 one career path you could go down is becoming a computer and information research scientist they make around 122,000 a year there's 32,000 jobs available and it's growing at 15 percent which is great meaning over the next 10 years there's going to be 5,000 new jobs that pop up so if you were going to kind of compare computer systems engineering to computer science for instance this is the way that i would explain it with computer science you'd most likely go into either software development or information technology and you would learn skills that are going to be related to that so you might work at a company like google for instance whereas with computer systems engineering you would still learn some of the lower level programming stuff you wouldn't get as deeply into it though you'd focus more on the hardware so you might work for a company like intel for instance that creates processors that go into a computer overall it's still a really solid one and it's one that you should definitely look into especially if you're somebody who likes hardware next one on the list is going to be operations and information systems management so this one is actually pretty similar to management information systems where you're basically combining like a business degree and a little bit of management in there as well with a technology degree but you're probably going to be adding a little bit more statistics and math in there compared to management information systems now this is a relatively rare degree so i do think that the statistics might be a little bit off on this one but you can expect to make around 63 000 a year in your first five years and 125 000 in mid career pay now one career path you could go down is you could become a general and operations manager in the technology industry these are going to be the people who manage the daily operations of a business and basically make sure that it stays alive and it keeps going there's about 2.4 million jobs available in the united states and they make on average about 123 000 a year you would likely expect to make even more than that if you worked within the technology industry just because there's more opportunity there and they tend to pay a little bit higher the highest paying one on the list is going to be number one which is going to be a combination of information science and computer science also known as information and computer science so you're going to have a lot of the computer science skills which is going to help you with the software development side of things but you're going to have a focus on data and i told you before how valuable information and data is so with this combination you are going to expect to make around 70 000 a year starting out and 127 000 in mid career pay one career path you could go down is becoming a computer and information systems manager they make around 146 000 a year there's 461 000 jobs available and it's growing at 10 which is much faster than average meaning over the next 10 years there's going to be 48 000 new jobs created now again i'm going to bring you back to the focus on data here data is one of the most valuable things and if you have the technical skills of being able to write computer programs and be really proficient there and you also have the data skills that kind of like the mathematical and statistical approach to collecting and analyzing data that combination is just killer speaking of statistical approach i've been working on a huge project over the last few months where i made my own personal degree rancor i took all of the best resources that i found in doing hundreds if not thousands of hours of research on different college degrees and careers and i put them all in one spreadsheet and i put it down in the description below you can check it out in the description below it's going to be on my patreon it's still a work in progress it's only version one point one at this point but i'm very happy with what we've done so far i actually hired somebody to help me with it and i do believe that it is the best list in the entire world at this point and it's going to get even better with that being said if you haven't done it yet go ahead and gently tap the like button hit the subscribe button ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts comments criticisms that you have on the video thank you so much for watching and before you leave go ahead and check out my other videos right here i made them just for you