The latest graduate employment survey reports are out.
The 2009 batch of graduates from NUS, NTU and SMU were asked about their starting pay and whether they were employed on a permanent basis.
The highest starting salaries come from the 4-year Information Systems Management programme at Singapore Management University. Those who graduated from this course with at least a Cum Laude (“with honour”) got a median starting pay of $4,000. One quarter of them earn $4,600 and above. However, only 72.2% of them are employed on a full-time permanent basis.
The worst performing course is the NTU Art, Design & Media. A mere 61.7% of the graduates are permanently employed. Half of them earned $2,300 and less.
Here are the rankings:
Top Median Gross Monthly Salaries (in brackets are the 75th-percentile salaries)
- SMU Information Systems Management (4-yr programme) Cum Laude and above – $4,000 ($4,600)
- SMU Economics (4-yr programme) Cum Laude and above – $3,200 ($4,000)
- SMU Economics (4-yr programme) – $3,000 ($3,763)
- NUS Business Administration (Honours) – $3,000 ($3,600)
- SMU Business Management (4-yr programme) Cum Laude and above – $3,000 ($3,500)
- NUS Chemical Engineering – $3,000 ($3,500)
- NUS Industrial & Systems Engineering – $3,000 ($3,450)
- NUS Dental Surgery – $3,000 ($3,400)
- NTU Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering – $3,000 ($3,300)
- NTU Aerospace Engineering – $3,000 ($3,250)
- NTU Arts (with Education) – $3,000 ($3,200)
- NUS Information Systems – $2,975 ($3,250)
- NTU Physics & Applied Physics – $2,950 ($3,000)
- NUS Computer Engineering – $2,900 ($3,440)
- NTU Chemistry & Biological Chemistry – $2,900 ($3,300)
- NUS Computer Science – $2,900 ($3,290)
- NTU Computer Science – $2,900 ($3,250)
- NTU Science (with Education) – $2,900 ($3,200)
- NTU Computer Engineering – $2,900 ($3,200)
- NUS Mechanical Engineering – $2,900 ($3,200)
- NUS Science (Honours) – $2,900 ($3,200)
The Dumping Grounds by Starting Pay (Gross Monthly)
- NTU Art, Design & Media – $2,300 ($2,800)
- NTU Accountancy (3-yr direct Honours programme) – $2,400 ($2,500)
- NUS Business Administration (Accountancy) – $2,400 ($2,500)
- NUS Applied Science – $2,500 ($2,500)
- NUS Science – $2,500 ($2,600)
- NUS Arts – $2,500 ($2,600)
- NUS Business Administration (3-yr programme) – $2,500 ($2,700)
- SMU Social Sciences (4-yr programme) – $2,500 ($2,850)
- NTU Maritime Studies – $2,500 ($2,900)
- SMU Accountancy (4-yr programme) – $2,500 ($2,950)
- NUS Nursing – $2,550 ($2,700)
- NTU Environmental Engineering – $2,600 ($2,900)
- NTU Communication Studies – $2,600 ($2,900)
- NUS Real Estate – $2,600 ($3,000)
- NUS Applied Science (Honours) – $2,600 ($3,000)
- SMU Accountancy (4-yr programme) Cum Laude and above – $2,600 ($4,000)
Top Permanent Employment Rate (in brackets are the average salaries)
- NUS Nursing – 100.0% ($2,568)
- NTU Science (with Education) – 100.0% ($3,030)
- NTU Arts (with Education) – 100.0% ($3,109)
- NUS Dental Surgery – 100.0% ($3,176)
- NTU Chinese – 98.0% ($2,756)
- NUS Business Administration (Accountancy) – 97.1% ($2,448)
- SMU Accountancy (4-yr programme) Cum Laude and above – 96.8% ($3,586)
- NUS Computer Engineering – 95.7% ($2,890)
- SMU Accountancy (4-yr programme) – 95.3% ($3,073)
- NUS Applied Science (Honours) – 94.7% ($2,674)
- NTU Computer Science – 94.3% ($2,930)
- NUS Material Science and Engineering – 93.8% ($2,880)
- NUS Civil Engineering – 92.9% ($2,801)
- SMU Economics (4-yr programme) Cum Laude and above – 92.6% ($3,606)
- NUS Industrial & Systems Engineering – 92.5% ($3,099)
- NUS Business Administration (Honours) – 92.1% ($3,389)
- NUS Information Systems – 91.1% ($2,918)
- NTU Civil Engineering – 90.8% ($2,769)
- NTU Accountancy (3-yr direct Honours programme) – 90.0% ($2,529)
The Dumping Grounds by Employability
- NTU Art, Design & Media – 61.7% ($2,431)
- NUS Environmental Engineering – 63.2% ($2,667)
- NUS Communication and Media – 70.8% ($2,536)
- SMU Social Sciences (4-yr programme) – 72.0% ($2,613)
- SMU Information Systems Management (4-yr programme) Cum Laude and above – 72.2% ($3,754)
- SMU Social Sciences (4-yr programme) Cum Laude and above – 73.3% ($2,673)
- NTU Materials Engineering – 75.3% ($2,745)
- NUS Arts – 75.9% ($2,511)
- NTU Environmental Engineering – 76.3% ($2,777)
- NUS Science – 76.5% ($2,525)
- NUS Computing – 76.9% ($2,841)
- NUS Applied Science – 76.9% ($2,393)
- NTU Physics & Applied Physics – 77.8% ($2,900)
- NTU Communication Studies – 78.2% ($2,562)
- NTU Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering – 78.6% ($2,990)
- NTU Mechanical Engineering – 79.1% ($2,794)
See last year’s rankings.
Do you trust this year’s reports?
103 Comments
ps: referring to SGD currency
tiffanymiffy from cc and the fella on brightsparks? All of you post and write in the same way!
Its bank IT,
Dear Ano,
Have you checked the average salaries of different banks on glassdoor.com?
For 10 years’ experience, 102K is slightly on the low side. I’d rather believe you should be worth at least 10K per month, meaning around 120K per annum.
However, if you have not had direct experience in banking IT before, then as a programmer with 10 years’ worth of experience, anything above 100K is pretty well-deserved.
Considering Singapore has one of the world’s lowest tax rates (possibly world’s second lowest after Hongkong, considering only developed financial marketplaces), you would have no trouble saving up quite a large sum in a few years.
from cozycot is the girl on brightsparks and the various different posters here insulting local grads. I have a suspicion she’s also the intellectual snob though the website is gone. She graduated from an australian university and worked in a bank formerly.
IT in banks sure make big bucks. But I think the hours are long.
depends on the culture. most of my friends don’t work long hours. i heard american banks are more demanding.
After accountancy, you can take up courses for compliance & auditing. I do not believe ppl who take accountancy really wants to work in this line forever.
any info about architecture students? given that most do a post grad after b arch. but still any stats?
Local unis are only seen as desirable by people in poly and the mediocre mass in JC.
The only people who think its prestigious (deluded) are the same people who have something to do with it, because they were cursed with it and have it on their CVs.
If it was so good, we won’t have so many students from top JC who were rejected by the scholarships and telling everyone else openly that they would just go on as many exchanges as possible” and “do their master’s overseas.
And Tiffanymiffy, i have no idea the things or places you’re talking about.
But one thing’s for sure. You’re one super deluded local grad to think that few people or only one party, Singaporean or otherwise, know about how $hitty local schools. no different from Reject with a capital R.
Actually, if you look at the base report, the median salaries are quite reasonable across all of the faculties, and there is nothing really shocking represented in the survey. I hired a fresh graduate at 2200 5 years ago, the starting salary now is 2300 – 2400. You will agree that this is hardly surprising. If you look at the survey broadly, and at all of the median salaries, they mostly fall between 2400 – 2800. The fact that a lot of the median salaries in the SMU survey is lower than the mean tells me that 1) that the data may not be sufficient 2) that there are salaries that skew the survey. I would presume that the variance is due to differences in industries, and one thing is quite clear, SMU must have done something right to equip their graduates with the ability to market themselves better than their peers.
Social science and arts have always drawn a slightly lower starting, whereas the IT, science side have always drawn a higher salary. That is inpart due to the nature of the course, and chemical sciences for example require specific knowledge and thus commands a industry premium.
What I object to in this instance is the use of the words “dumping ground” coined for the faculties with the 25th percentile salaries. That is not only unfair and offensive, it reeks of ‘moneyism’ that education is measured only by money. Most of my best managers are from these so called “dumping grounds”, and starting high does not equate to ending well. Technical jobs tend to stagnate after a few years, once the individual is unable to step out of being a technical expert and transform him or herself into a people manager, and at the end of the end of the day, not everyone is suited to lead teams, and not everyone wants to.
Lastly, this is a purely sensationalist way of reporting, almost similar to the tabloids, where only the juicy part of the report (ie, the outliers 75% percentile) is reported. You will find that most people fall into the middle, and graduates going to the workforce will have more or less similar salary packages, benefits aside.
I have hire interns from SMU before, and I do feel that they communicate better, have a sense of entrepreneurial spirit, and they tend to know what they wish to achieve in the next 5 years.
A positive way to reads this report is to then ask, what are the skills sets employers wants in the next 5 years, do our graduates have it, and do they have the right attitude and mindset. Do HR people prefer to hire these young graduates or Gen X staff are a surer bet? What we don’t want is to have everyone go into the “money making faculties” just for the perception that they will make more money. There are enough people who are in the wrong jobs simply because their parents wanted them to be in those professions, and enough disengaged employees who don’t love what they do.
My suggestion? I graduated from Arts and Social Sciences. Love what you do, study what interests you, the value of education is far more than whether your salary is higher or lower than your friends, and at the end of the day, whether or not you feel fulfilled has little to do with your gross salary.
A little maths for those who really want to know how much doctors earn:
MEdical school fees are subsidised, but still we had to pay ~ $15k per academic year (now it is more) out of our own pocket. Therefore total school fees out of own pocket = 5 x $15k = $75k. Most of us are from average income families and need to take loans from banks.
Junior doctors – starting pay $2200. Night calls (around 6 – 10 sleepless nights a month) – $100-150 per night call. Part of pay also goes to pay back the tuition fee loan.
Now i am around a decade post-graduation. My pay is $7.6k. I know nuts about investment so i have no other source of income. I stay in HDB and take bus to work. Good thing is, I have finished my tuition fee loan.
Most of my doctor friends are thrifty down-to-earth people.
Of course a small percentage of doctors come from rich families and do not have problems with tuition fees and may already be given cars and condo before they graduated…
also, many of us choose to specialise. postgrad courses and exams all cost a few thousand dollars.
in other words, for the amount of money and time we have spent, medicine in public sector does not pay well at all. It’s just annoying that many people still think we are filthy rich.
Hey doc_in_30s
what u say is at odds with the situation in Singapore.
Look at the salaries below
top salaries in 2009
1.Specialised surgeon – $27,977
2.Managing director – $26,444
3.Personal banker – $20,238
4.Commodities futures broker – $19,098
5.General manager – $18,068
It is a known fact that civil servants are pegged to the private sector and the only reason why drs leave public hospitals is they want to earn more doing less 🙁
Which is why private specialists have little queue and public specialists got such a long queue.
We should admit more rich students in NUS and Duke so the poor docs will stop exploiting their patients to become rich.
it is amazing how different people think.
Let us remember that doctors are also humans – we also fall sick, we also have emotions, we hope to have better homes for our families, we want to save up for our children’s education etc etc
Despite all these, most doctors (judging from my circle) truly want to do good for their patients, and most do not exploit patients to become rich.
Well, perhaps there is indeed some sense in what sgpatient said ‘admit more rich students to med sch’. The poorer ones might as well do more financially rewarding careers instead of being accused of exploiting patients. So does sgpatient think that doctors from rich families make better doctors simply because they do not exploit patients? What an interesting way of thinking…
huh? – yes many junior doctors who go out to be GPs end up earning much more than those who continue to stay and specialize in public hospitals. Yes, GPs do earn more than hospital specialists.
doc_in_30s: Yes it’s interesting how different people think. U mentioned that “Most of us are from average income families and need to take loans from banks” but most med grads came from RJC, HCJC, VJCs etc and i would like to think that more of them come from rich rather than “average income” families. Like u said, they owned cars and condos before they grad..
U didn’t mention how much MOs make doing locum during NS. Also like what huh? and yourself mentioned, GPs can make quite a lot of money. (i suppose 10k/mth not a problem given how much u guys already make for locums..) Finally, docs who stay in hospitals, gain experience and specialise eventually will make more than the GPs..that’s why we see salaries like:
1.Specialised surgeon – $27,977
So docs pay are not as bad as u claim la..if u compare to what most people are drawing..
sgpatient: It is not the poor docs’ fault for medical fees. Admitting more rich ppl to med sch will not solve the prob since hospitals are not gg to charge u any lesser just becos there are more rich docs ard?
If one has no money to pay, no hospitals will treat u for free. Regardless of rich or poor docs. This is reality in Sg.
I mean u may make less now compared to some GPs, but after u specialise and move to private hospitals, it’s a different story.
I dont agree with what doc in 30 say.
Most of my classmates are from rich and middle income family so obviously the decision to raise tuition fees help to filter out those poor students who is trying to climb the social ladder by becoming a doc.
I do admit that some of my classmates including myself has no idea what is like to be poor and am guilty of giving the best medication like augmentin and klacid even though the poor patients cant afford it.
But we sure dont exploit our patients!
Maybe those poor doctors from the lower income do to climb the social ladder.
We should really filter out these poor and greedy medical students and prevent them from spoiling the reputation of doctors in Singapore.
again may i remind everyone that we should not generalise.
1. i certainly hope rjc/vjc/hcjc take in smart students, not rich ones.
2. not all students from rich families are smart.
3. not all students from poor families are poor.
4. doctors from poor families are mostly ‘normal’ and morally upright doctors who are not greedy and do not exploit people.
5. of course there are doctors from rich families who are greedy, not so morally upright, and may exploit the patients or the poor
6. of course the definition of rich and poor is a matter of relativity. there are also families who are very rich and teach their sons and daughters to be kind and humble people.
lets pray for more intelligent, wise, sensible, honest and kind humans, whether they are doctors or whether they come from rich families or not.
If all rich doctors are like the richdoc above and all hospital administrators are like hospadmin in the other thread (I spent a full hour reading it), then we got a problem.
But I’m an optimist. I think richdoc is trying to be humourous and hospadmin is just zealously doing his/her job to get more foreign doctors.
The really rich doctors wont call himself rich.
I am poor but I work hard for my money.
Stop saying I exploit my patients!
We are professionals providing a service so patients should be willing to pay or go wait in polyclinics or public hospitals.
Subsidised patients are really pain in the ass, pay so little out of pocket but demand to be treated like private patients who pay the full fees.
Civil servants are worst, exploiting public healthcare with their CDC card.
Aiyo
rich doc or poor doc
as long as can treat is good dr.
Want to earn my money also difficult cause I always go polyclinic for referral to see subsidised specialists.
That way, I can save a lot of money.
Hi. I am a US dentist moving to Singapore shortly. Can anyone please tell me how much do general dentists in Singapore make? Also any tips on how to go about looking for a job would be most helpful.
Hi banker & all,
I am 29 years old in the media industry as Business Director.
Making S$143K as annual package.
I graduated with Master degree and Honors degree.
Do u think I am underpaid?
Tx
Ron
hi Ron
i’m also 29 yr old, but a lawyer
base is 15k per mth.
bonuses range fr 6mth- 1yr
You don’t make that much.
i’m a small timer towkay, also 29. my smallish steamboat “restaurant” in geylang made me half a mil in net profit last year. my pushcart business selling handphone and laptop skins also made me in excess of $200k. i don’t have a boss and i don’t even need to show up for work. you guys are pathetic.
yah, when i was 29 my total package was in excess of 400K. My base exceeds 17K a month so biz directors and lawyers make quite little actually…
the arguments are getting hilarious
I am system administrator with 6 years experience, degree holder but earn $3k. much much low paid…
kuli kia, maybe you need to upgrade yourself, eg brush up your english?
yah, really need upgrade myself somewhere to stay competence and competitive. Seems that is only way to survive…
i am a smu graduate and starting pay is only 1.6k. employers look at experience, not only your education
from the survey, looks like u shld be asking more.
What about NTU’s Electrical & Electronic Engineering? It always attract plane loads of students from China, India, Indonesia, etc.
Why no mention here??
with all the foreign talent studying there, NTU EEE is obviously the most elite course. so elite that this lousy ranking table doesn’t deserve the right to include it.
it’s thanks the uni and government giving out free scholarships to these talented foreign students. otherwise they would have gone to harvard, mit, cambridge, qinghua and IIT.
Currently working as an editor in an international news wire agency after graduation, despite hailing from your definition of a “dumping ground”.
I weep for your choice of parochial and archaic terminology.
If I’m graduating from overseas, degree with honours, would i have difficulty trying to find a job that pay at least 2300-2500? I major in Sport management. Something that is often neglected from such statistics.
Move to the best sporting countries and work there. Watch the movie Jerry McGuire for some show me the money inspiration!
That said, Singapore is building a sports hub at Kallang. So you may give it a shot. I suspect salary won’t be attractive. Moreover, given singapore’s track record in creating hubs (think life science and semicon and even Suzhou), don’t bet your life and future on it. Be flexible and bail out while still young. Work in a bank, like what all youngsters are doing now. 🙂
i totally agree with Kay…I couldn’t have said it better..thank you for being our voice too 🙂
I want to know about other private Universities in Singapore like East Asia School of Business(EASB)and of campuses housed in EASB but branches of UK universities like UWIC and Edinburgh etc. Please Reply.