When I started college in 1998, the dot-com bubble was only an anxious froth. Computers were becoming increasingly popular and hardly a day went by when you didn’t hear about some hot new startup. They hadn’t really exploded yet, that wouldn’t be for another year, but everyone wanted to get into “computers.” The path to riches was paved not with cheese, as Feivel once thought, but with Internets and electronics.

Nowadays, computers are commonplace and while computer science and engineering still pepper the top job lists, there are a few jobs out there that you probably didn’t know paid as well as they do. Thanks to US News and World Reports, we now know eleven of them. I only looked at the more interesting ones.

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I always enjoy looking at these lists because they give a little glimpse into some of our nation’s most storied firms. I think these are more for entertainment purposes, much like the top paying undergraduate degrees, because the average total pay isn’t something you’ll get right out of the gate.

It’s fun to read are the various perks employees get because often times the companies that compensate the best tend to have great benefits as well. A popular company to talk about when you list slick benefits is always Google’s plethora of employee benefits.

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While these types of lists are about as valuable as lists for the top paying jobs, they sure are fun to read, aren’t they? I put even less stock in these types of lists since they’re far more generic than top job lists and less quantifiable. It’s like when the coaches are polled to get the rankings of the NCAA Division I football teams… I can’t remember the last time a pre-season #1 ended up with the trophy that next January (I don’t follow much college football though, I did go to Robocup powerhouse Carnegie Mellon).

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Business Pundit had a great post last week on 25 Well-Paying Jobs that Most People Overlook (and Why) meant to “spotlight jobs with stigmas attached to them that pay more than the typical person would think.” The headline job was that of crab fishermen and a shout out to one of my favorite shows, The Deadliest Catch. If you’ve ever seen the show, just one episode, you’ll know that those men earn every penny of the tens of thousands they earn in a short period of time. They get the crap beat out of them by the ocean, by the boat, by their captain and their crew mates. I totally understand why Alaskan King Crab is as expensive as it is.

Which job surprised me the most? Probably a dog walker:

Dogs can be scary enough without putting several of them on leashes and hoping they’ll behave for a complete stranger as you walk them around town. However, the undesirability of the job is precisely what makes it high-paying. In a busy metro area, a reputable dog walker can rake it in to the tune of $50 per hour. As one article points out, “that’s more than the average salary of a mid-level manager.”

If things don’t work out, I could always walk dogs.

For the last three years, I’ve watched for and written about the list Yahoo releases every year for the best jobs for graduates. The 2008 best paying job for graduates was in the field of Chemical Engineering. Last year, the 2007 best paying job for graduates was Chemical Engineering. The year before that, the 2006 best paying job for graduates was Chemical Engineering. I think it’s safe to say, Chemical Engineering is here to stay.

The problem with looking at these types of lists is that if you were equally capable of doing any of the jobs on the list and if money were your primary driver, by the time you graduated, the list could change. When I started college in 1998, I was lucky. All the hot job lists had computer science, computer engineering, information systems and information technology all over the top spots. I wanted to study computer science and so the appearance high on the list for salaries merely cemented the decision. However, when I graduated in December 2001 (for all you math majors, I was done a semester early partly because of AP credits), computer science wasn’t really a hot job in too many places because of the dot-com bust.

Despite that, one thing is clear by looking at these lists year after year. Engineering is hot. While the non-engineering jobs on the list, the doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. are stable, high-pay (eventually), and high-demand, the competition for top engineering talent will always keep salaries for new graduates in those fields very high.

Chemical engineering may not always be the top paying graduate job (though it’s prospects do look good), but chances are #1 will have ‘engineering’ in there somewhere.

Every year, around this time of college graduation, various media outlets report the average salaries various college graduates and this year is no different. CNN and Careerbuilder are reporting, based on National Association of Colleges and Employers data, that salaries are up 4% this year compared to last year and hiring is expected to increase 8%. Take that recession! (cynics will say that employers are hiring cheaper graduates and dumping the more expensive seasoned employees!)

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