Comment by BeetleB

In the social sciences, there is a lot of prestige to be had. Do some ground breaking work, engage with the public via bestselling books, and then get invited by the president to work on policy.

Even if they don't work for the administration, there are plenty of other bodies that will value them and pay large sums of money (or let them have large influence).

Very common amongst economists, and more and more common amongst disciplines like psychology.

Even in technical fields, if you can manage to become a big name, you can do consulting work and get paid quite well.

> Then got a job in industry making far more money

This is not a healthy way to look at it.

The average mechanical engineer isn't making tons of money in industry. A ME professor at a top university likely makes more. A biology major with just a BS degree will make less than the average biology associate professor.

But more importantly, there's a simpler reason why money is a poor metric to measure: You can always get more money in finance or medicine than as a mechanical engineer. Does it make sense to denigrate a whole profession just because one can make more money elsewhere?