"Students' choice of college major does not affect their future salaries quite as strongly as many people believe, according to a recent paper flagged today at The New York Times's Freakonomics blog," The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "In raw terms, the two scholars found the usual salary disparities: Nursing and social-work majors earn $48,900 per year, on average, while engineering majors bring home an average of $102,290. But Mr. Hamermesh and Mr. Donald found that 'a remarkably large fraction' of those gaps appears to be explained by factors such as the students' SAT scores, family backgrounds, and number of hours worked each week, not their choice of major per se."