Graduates earn a median $59,954 two years after finishing, more than 56% of master's majors. Measured across 616 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
It pays around the middle. What you earn will depend more on where you study and what you do with it than on the subject label.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York University cost & debt at this university → | $73,943 | $77,297 | $101,323 | 148 |
| 2 | Dallas Baptist University cost & debt at this university → | $59,116 | $76,460 | $76,435 | — |
| 3 | Mercy University | $66,128 | $75,706 | $81,420 | 14 |
| 4 | Old Dominion University cost & debt at this university → | $63,833 | $74,576 | not published | 14 |
| 5 | Vanderbilt University cost & debt at this university → | $63,852 | $73,321 | $82,878 | 46 |
| 6 | Northeastern State University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $72,796 | $81,036 | 16 |
| 7 | Seton Hall University cost & debt at this university → | $69,696 | $72,693 | $84,791 | 35 |
| 8 | University of Massachusetts-Boston cost & debt at this university → | $64,099 | $72,134 | $81,557 | 25 |
| 9 | University of Maryland Global Campus | $70,676 | $71,798 | $73,403 | 92 |
| 10 | Golden Gate University cost & debt at this university → | $70,847 | $71,734 | $85,000 | 30 |
| 11 | Fordham University cost & debt at this university → | $68,578 | $71,575 | $87,004 | 66 |
| 12 | CUNY Hunter College | not published | $71,015 | $79,246 | 23 |
It is the median of what real graduates of this exact major earned, taken from tax records two years after they completed. It is not a starting salary, not an average of job adverts, and not a projection. The median master's major in this dataset reports $54,713, so Accounting and Related Services sits above the middle by $5,241.
Two years is early in a career. Fields with long training pipelines — medicine, law, research — look weaker at this point than they will at ten, while trades and applied technical fields peak sooner. Read a low figure in a long-pipeline subject as "slow start", not "bad degree".
There is no debt figure here on purpose. The Department of Education publishes earnings by field of study but not borrowing, so nobody can honestly tell you the debt of a specific major. Debt is published per institution — that is where our university cost pages carry it.
We may earn a commission if you take a loan through a provider here. It never changes the earnings figures on this page — those come from the US Department of Education.
Source: US Department of Education College Scorecard, field-of-study earnings (median earnings of graduates who received federal financial aid, measured 1–3 years after completion). Figures are per major and credential level, pooled across US programmes. Information only, not financial advice.