Ever worry about what’s going to happen after leaving the bubble of safety that the campus offers, and moving on into the real world? Afraid that these trying times will leave you broke, jobless or some unfortunate combination of the two?

Well don’t panic, because for every panic-stricken student paralyzed by the thought that they worked their ass off for a degree that might not even guarantee them a job, let alone a career, there is hope for you yet! The New York Times has released a list of the 20 American colleges and universities that produce the highest-earning alumni, and, well, the University of California, Berkeley is on it.

That’s right, Cal comes in at number 18, boasting a median starting salary of just under $60,000 per year and a median mid-career (at least 10 years post-graduation) salary of an annual $110,000 for its students. Not too shabby for the only public university on the top 20.

The list is topped off by a New England trifecta of Dartmouth, MIT, and Harvard—their graduates earn a mid-career median salary of roughly $130,000 per year. Other statistics included in the report reveal that—shockingly enough—majors like engineering, economics, mathematics, and the so-called “hard sciences” tend to produce “both highest starting median salaries and highest mid-career median salaries.”

Humanities kids, looks like we’re out of luck.

Image Source: suksim under Creative Commons
Do Elite Colleges Produce the Best-Paid Graduates [NY Times]

The Academic Ranking of World Universities announced its list of the world’s top 100 universities today. Can you feel our collective smirk? Berkeley was No. 3 in the entire world, second only to Harvard and The-Rival-School-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named (*cough* Palo Alto *cough*).

That means best public university in the world, bitches. Whaddya say we fill out one of those research grants to celebrate?

But what does “best” mean? According to the article, criteria included “the number of scientific publications released by institutes and the number of graduates who won the Nobel Prize.” And all our NL parking spaces probably didn’t hurt either.

Obviously, judging wasn’t a mere swimsuit competition (even though we do look rather fetching in a one-piece). But here’s another (self-serving) question: How many of those top-ranked universities also had a professor competing—and winning—on “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” Because thanks to our man Smoot, we would have destroyed in that category, too.

Do we sound smug? Because we’re trying not to lord it over any of our underlings, like Yale or MIT. No offense, guys. Maybe next year.

Image source: terren in Virginia under Creative Commons
World’s top 100 universities named [UPI]
Earlier: Annual College Ranking List Places Berkeley at Third