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A Wall Street Journal study , conduced by Payscale.com, looked at which college majors led to the most satisfaction. They surveyed 10,800 workers who got their bachelor's degrees between 1999 and 2010. The respondents had to be working and could have advanced degrees. They found that the two most satisfying careers were chemical engineering and management information systems, with 54% of grads in those fields saying they were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their career path so far.

Less than half of computer science grads (48%) could claim the same satisfaction. But by far the lowest level of satisfaction (26%) came from those who studied psychology. The WSJ theorized that the low score might have been due to the fact that undergraduate degrees in psychology don't do much for a career-graduate degrees are usually necessary. Of course, that might be said of some of the technical careers too.

Perhaps those that pursue science and technology degrees are optimists. If that's the case then that might be part of the reason they do well. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, cited in the MIT Sloan Management Review .

], found evidence that optimists get jobs more easily and get promoted more. The article notes that other research has also suggested that optimists are good at coping with problems and flexible about trying new actions when needed.

Why do you think those in science and technology careers might have fared so well in their satisfaction levels? And would you recommend that a High School student pursue a STEM career?

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written by Tom Hoffman, November 04, 2010

Interesting findings, Ellen.

I would venture to guess that many people in IT, especially those who have either worked in a variety of disciplines or have taken on increased responsibilities over the years, like the fact that they continually face new challenges.

As you know, IT is also a field where many people are constantly hungry to learn new things and there are tremendous opportunities to do so in an environment where new technologies are being introduced all the time.