Graduates earn a median $38,289 two years after finishing, more than 8% of master's majors. Measured across 469 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
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.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Medical College of Wisconsin | not published | $223,678 | not published | — |
| 2 | University of Wisconsin-La Crosse | not published | $171,020 | $177,771 | 18 |
| 3 | San Francisco State University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $76,460 | not published | 58 |
| 4 | St. John's University-New York | not published | $60,161 | not published | 18 |
| 5 | Stony Brook University | $33,310 | $58,673 | not published | 54 |
| 6 | University of Maryland-College Park cost & debt at this university → | not published | $58,673 | not published | 4 |
| 7 | University of Toledo cost & debt at this university → | $65,635 | $56,563 | not published | 55 |
| 8 | California State University-Sacramento cost & debt at this university → | $47,269 | $54,435 | not published | 9 |
| 9 | The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley cost & debt at this university → | not published | $53,697 | not published | 43 |
| 10 | University of Massachusetts-Lowell cost & debt at this university → | $62,654 | $52,107 | not published | 19 |
| 11 | George Mason University cost & debt at this university → | $57,415 | $50,856 | not published | 51 |
| 12 | East Texas A&M University | $56,071 | $50,856 | not published | 28 |
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 Biology, General sits below the middle by $16,424.
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.