Here's the nationwide average http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Bachelor_of_Scien... .The average pay for a senior software engineer is 77-101k. Hardly the 80k norm for fresh grads that the OP is suggesting. It might be the case at Stanford(although I'd need to see statistics before I concede that) but the op's explanation for the trend mentioned in the article was a broad indictment non-cs majors rather than it being specific to the culture at stanford. Google Pays $8000 a month interns? They hire co-op students out of my school $14,000 for the entire 4 month term which comes out to about 3500 a month.