RAPID CITY, S.D. (Oct. 1, 2012) – South Dakota School of Mines and Technology graduates enter the job market earning more than Harvard University graduates on average, and a news story touting this fact has been republished nationwide numerous times since it first appeared on
Bloomberg.com and
BloombergBusinessweek on Sept. 17.
The impetus of the story is a shortage of mining industry engineers due to a dearth of graduates nationwide. Starting salary figures quoted from PayScale’s data from 2011-2012, however, include a more general figure for all graduates: $56,700 for South Dakota School of Mines and Technology graduates vs. $54,100 for Harvard University.
Joe Richter’s story highlights return on investment, citing the vast difference in tuition costs: $10,530 for out-of-state tuition costs for the School of Mines compared to Harvard’s approximately $40,000 for undergraduates. He also quotes a Mines senior who has already been offered a job at Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. paying more than $60,000 a year upon graduation this May.
The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, founded in 1885 as a mining engineering institution during the heyday of the Black Hills gold rush, is one of just 14 universities in the nation to offer mining engineering degrees.
A shortage of industry workforce managers is one reason the School of Mines this year has begun offering a master’s degree in mining engineering.
Bloomberg’s story has gone viral since it was originally published. A handful of the many additional media outlets where the story, or parts of it, can be found are
Time magazine,
Forbes, the
Today show, the
Los Angeles Times,
Yahoo! Finance,
Asbury Park Press,
The New York Observer, the
San Francisco Chronicle,
The Atlantic Wire and American Public Media’s
Marketplace.