All degrees are not equal, but how could we possibly expect a think-tank to realize that?

Last month, the center-left Economic Policy Institute released a report highlighting the gender wage gap among recent college graduates.  To quote from the source:

Despite these similarities, male and female expected wages upon graduation differ greatly: while young male college grads earn an average hourly wage of $19.64 early in their careers, their female counterparts earn an average hourly wage of just $16.56, or 18.6 percent less than men.

The headline reads “Same Education, Different Pay,” but one commenter on Reddit joked that it might as well have read, “We expected engineers and schoolteachers to have the same starting salary because both required a piece of piece of paper from university.”

It isn’t just a stereotype that men are more likely to major in fields that pay more.  Sixteen of the twenty-five highest-paying majors are in the field of engineering, and over 80% of those receiving degrees in that field are male.  Compare that to the lowest-paying college majors, which, to quote Business Insider, are “concentrated in arts, education, consumer services, psychology, and social work.”  Nearly 80% of those who majored in education are female, as are 77% of psychology majors, 61% of art and performance majors, and 82% of those who majored in public administration & social work (downloadable data set in this article).

Matt Palumbo is the author of The Conscience of a Young Conservative and In Defense of Classical Liberalism.