Get Thee to a Computer Science Degree

For Dustin Hoffman's graduate, the word was "plastics." For today's graduate, if you're tossing around words like social networking, Flash, ActiveX, or Unix, you're probably on the right track. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, despite offshore jobs and the Internet bust, IT skills are going to continue to be in strong demand through 2016.

Computer science graduates make the highest salaries of any of the sciences, according to an NSF study. (A few engineering majors, including chemical engineering, do even better.) According to the College Journal, recent computer science graduates earn an average annual salary of $50,892. Computer engineering graduates earn an annual average salary of $54,200. Close behind, information science graduates earn $43,902 and management information systems majors earn an annual $43,653. Compare this with the $36,000 annual salary average of those liberal arts types. Specialists such as video game programmers do even better, according to Animation Arena. (Yes, starting doctors make more, $125,000+, but they endure a lot more school.)

But it's not just your major—where you study counts too. And it counts a lot more if companies like Google and Facebook live in your backyard. In a recent blog on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington reports that nowhere is there a more frenzied hunt for computer science talent as in Silicon Valley. Stanford, he says, is ground zero for the talent search. He says that Facebook could be offering as much as $92,000 to new recruits, even before they graduate. According to Arrington's sources, students with a master's degree in computer science are being offered as much as $130,000 for associate product manager jobs at Google.

Even if you're not a computer science major, my sense is that you're worth more to a prospective employer if you have great computer skills like web development and graphics.

Or maybe the best way to a job is simply to hang out on Stanford's campus shanghaiing the recruiters as they show up.