Although many college graduates will come out of school with loans, starting salaries for most graduates have reported significant increases, according to a Spring 2005 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

“What we’re seeing is pretty much across the board,” said Andrea Koncz, employment information manager for NACE. “Last year we started to see some increase. This year we’re seeing more.”

This trend is a break from the decreases in starting salaries seen two years prior, Koncz said.

Chemical engineers topped the charts, with other engineering and business degrees close behind.

Liberal arts and sciences majors also showed promising increases.

“Employers are going back to hiring more students with liberal arts and science [degrees]; they’re looking for people with critical thinking skills,” said Ron Short, executive director of Career Services.

The survey did not receive enough responses from health and human science majors to draw significant conclusions, but found a 5.1 percent increase for nursing majors.

Health care majors have done and will continue to do well in the coming years, Short said.

Students should analyze the survey results with cautious optimism because some experts believe the salary increases could be coming from inflation.

Wages increase almost every year as a combination of increased productivity and improved worker compensation, associate economics professor Carl Campbell said.

The Employment Cost Index measures the change in salaries over time and saw a 2.4 percent increase, said Gary Steinberg, spokesman for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Most of modern history has shown there’s a price creep, so there’s a wage creep,” Steinberg said. “You don’t typically see a wage decrease.”

This said, not all of the wage increases should be discredited.

The survey can be skewed because it is based on a self-report of students and employers, but there is reason to believe the economy is strong, said associate economics professor Stephen Karlson.

Inflation cannot account for all of the salary increases, Karlson said.

“Inflation is a result of the government printing more money,” he said. “I don’t see the federal reserve doing that kind of expansion.”