Bachelor's Degree Earnings by Program

For students and families

This view is for when you already know what you want to study and you're choosing between schools. Pick a major, narrow it down to a state, and you'll see every college in that state that offers it, sorted by what their graduates earn.

The earnings here come from the U.S. Census Bureau, drawn from payroll and tax records. These are actual earnings, not student surveys (which suffer from response bias and other biases) or web-scraped salary figures (often unverified and duplicated across sites). You're seeing what graduates were actually paid one, five, and ten years after they finished.

How to use this page

Step 1

Pick a broad field

Start with a family of majors, like Engineering, Health Sciences, Business, or Education. This narrows the list to programs that fit your interests.

Step 2

Pick a specific program

Inside that family, choose the program you'd actually enroll in, like nursing, mechanical engineering, or elementary education.

Step 3

Pick a state (optional)

Choose where you'd like to study or work to see every college in that state offering your program, ranked by what graduates earn. Or leave it blank to compare the same program across every state the data covers.

A few questions worth asking

Among colleges offering the same program in the same state, how much do graduate earnings vary at year one, year five, and year ten?
Do some schools produce graduates who earn well right away, while others' graduates need more time to catch up?
Does the curve keep climbing from year one to year ten, or flatten early? A steady climb often means the program opens doors to promotions or further training.

A note on coverage. Not every college is in this data. Coverage depends on which states and university systems share their graduate records with the U.S. Census Bureau, so a missing school isn't a verdict on quality. Self-employed graduates are also not covered, since their earnings don't run through standard payroll records.