pay scale

The PayScale survey shows that engineering may be a good way to make quick money, but it's not the only route to wealth in the long run.

Maybe it's time for a career change to one of these 10 fields from Money and PayScale. com's list of America's best jobs.

And since the PayScale data combine salaries and bonuses, they are not directly comparable with school-supplied data on salaries alone.

Compare your pay rate with those of your peers using the tools at salary websites, like PayScale. com.

Prospective students should instead be wary of other things, says Al Lee of PayScale, an employment data research firm.

Note: Payscale. com median salaries for 5 to 9 years of experience.

Web sites, including salary. com, payscale. com and salaryexpert. com, publish pay data by occupation.

What other interesting facts did PayScale discover?

Five of the top 20 and 14 of the top 50 highest paying jobs with the most growth potential are IT jobs, as ranked by CNN Money and PayScale.

You can do so by asking colleagues and contacts in your network and researching salary data on sites like payscale. com and glassdoor. com.

The study was conducted by PayScale, an online salary and compensation information company.

PayScale surveyed people who hold jobs in industries such as health care, finance and government.

Part of this is probably because of the nature of PayScale's data collection tools.