Bachelor's · earnings grade

Is a Anthropology degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $25,967 two years after finishing, more than 4% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 465 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.

The verdict on the money

On earnings alone this is among the lowest-paying majors at this level. That does not make it a bad subject, but it does make the debt you take on for it matter more.

Median earnings $25,967 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $21,964–$28,816 middle half of US programmes

Over no degree — vs $39,520 high-school median

Graduates a year 8,349 465 programmes

Where a Anthropology degree pays best US programmes ranked on their own graduates' median earnings two years out.

#	University	1 yr out	2 yrs out	3 yrs out	Graduates/yr
1	Monmouth University	$32,481	$50,606	$50,688	11
2	Colby College cost & debt at this university →	not published	$44,971	not published	8
3	George Washington University cost & debt at this university →	$36,176	$41,565	not published	33
4	Duke University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$40,467	not published	10
5	University of Maryland-College Park cost & debt at this university →	$22,281	$39,729	$42,588	23
6	CUNY Lehman College	$25,486	$38,289	not published	45
7	Columbia University in the City of New York	$28,302	$38,289	$29,201	29
8	Rhodes College cost & debt at this university →	not published	$37,208	not published	11
9	University of Massachusetts-Boston cost & debt at this university →	$31,140	$37,208	$35,594	24
10	Wake Forest University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$36,668	not published	14
11	Temple University cost & debt at this university →	$28,166	$36,308	$36,843	14
12	Brown University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$35,060	not published	28

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $25,967 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $25,194 is what the typical programme reports, counting a class of twenty the same as a class of two thousand. The weighted figure is higher here, which means the larger programmes in this field are the better-paying ones.

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 bachelor's major in this dataset reports $36,497, so Anthropology sits below the middle by $10,530.

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.

Anthropology at other levels

Master's — $38,289 (F)

Scholarships for Anthropology students

Whatever the subject pays, the money you do not borrow is the money you keep.

PhD Social Anthropology in University of Oslo Norway 2017 2017 International Graduate Fellowships at American University... Harvard South Asia Institute Raghunathan Family PhD Fellowship... 100 Plus Macquarie University UAC International Scholarships i... 69 Ca’ Foscari University of Venice Positions and Scholarships... Institute for Advanced Study (IAST) Doctoral Scholarship in Fr...

See all Anthropology scholarships →

Study Anthropology Programmes listed on ScholarshipsAds.

Biological Anthropology — University of Cambridge Anthropology — University of Oxford Archaeology and Anthropology — University of Oxford Anthropology - Evolutionary (Hons) — University of Toronto Anthropology - Socio-Cultural (Hons) — University of Toronto Anthropology — Trent University

Majors that pay more at this level Closest first — useful if you are still choosing.

Fine Arts — $25,467 Music — $25,658 Communication Disorders Sciences — $26,353 Arts, Entertainment — $26,739 Linguistic, Comparative — $27,307 Physiology — $27,334

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Anthropology: the questions people ask

How much do Anthropology graduates earn?

The median bachelor's graduate earns $25,967 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 231 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $25,236.