Last week's web poll invited our readers to pool their wisdom and give some career advice to the business leaders of tomorrow. Which field, we asked, should students aspire to: engineering, finance, law or medicine?
The voting was tight between engineering, finance and medicine, but few of our readers felt moved to recommend the law. The other three professions finished in alphabetical order with only a few votes separating them. Surprisingly, that means our readers picked the lowest-paid profession of the lot.
According to Forbes, medicine-related jobs dominate the best-paid gigs in the US, with the top nine spots in its 2009 list going to surgeons, anaesthesiologists, orthodontists and so on. The financial industry clearly pays at least as well, though salary surveys don't always reflect that thanks to the big chunk of remuneration that gets paid in bonuses. Lawyers rank 16th in the Forbes list, slightly above the best-paid engineering jobs. Journalists do not feature.
In total, 32% of our readers voted for engineering, 30% for finance, 27% for medicine and a paltry 11% for law.
Photo provided by AFP.
