New college graduates finding wage gender gap: survey

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Updated: June 19, 2011 12:34AM

Female new college graduates received median starting salary offers 17 percent lower than their male counterparts, and the discrepancy can’t be explained as the result of males choosing majors that lead to higher-paying jobs, according to a new survey.

Even when salary is adjusted by major, men come out ahead in most cases, according to the report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The report is based on a NACE survey of nearly 13,000 graduating college seniors last fall that found the median starting salary offer for new female college graduates with bachelor’s degrees was $36,451, compared to the $44,159 median offered to their male counterparts.

The survey looked at 14 majors and found men’s starting salary offers were higher among 12 of the majors, including accounting, business administration, computer science, education, mathematics, psychology and social sciences. Women only had higher salary offers in engineering and liberal arts/humanities.

Gender pay disparity in the work force has often been explained as a byproduct of past historical discrimination, with the theory being the differential will fade away with time, report author Edwin Koc noted.

Another explanation links the disparity to the choice many women make to leave the labor force at times to start families.

“Both of these explanations appear to have some validity and some impact on the overall gender differential,” Koc states in the report. “However, they do not explain the lower starting salaries that women still encounter when they begin their careers after graduating college.”