Graduates earn a median $64,791 two years after finishing, more than 61% of master's majors. Measured across 54 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 | Keck Graduate Institute | $69,968 | $73,035 | $87,892 | 88 |
| 2 | Rutgers University-Newark | $74,298 | $64,791 | $102,688 | 1 |
| 3 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick | $74,298 | $64,791 | $102,688 | 115 |
| 4 | Rutgers University-Camden | $74,298 | $64,791 | $102,688 | — |
| 5 | University of Colorado Colorado Springs cost & debt at this university → | $43,588 | $37,363 | $37,201 | 35 |
| 6 | Touro University | not published | $10,925 | not published | 112 |
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 $52,837, so Biological and Physical Sciences sits above the middle by $11,954.
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.
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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.