Master's · earnings grade

Is a Clinical, Counseling degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $44,468 two years after finishing, more than 25% of master's majors. Measured across 633 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.

The verdict on the money

Financially it is a slower start than most majors at this level — worth planning your borrowing around.

Median earnings $44,468 2 years after finishing

Typical range $39,585–$49,832 middle half of US programmes

Over no degree +$4,948 vs $39,520 high-school median

Graduates a year 26,377 633 programmes

Where a Clinical, Counseling 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	University of La Verne cost & debt at this university →	not published	$86,129	$91,276	43
2	Loyola Marymount University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$77,487	$83,365	33
3	California State University-Long Beach cost & debt at this university →	$69,765	$76,930	$82,103	50
4	University of Massachusetts Global	$77,168	$76,460	$81,714	222
5	San Diego State University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$76,460	not published	20
6	California State University-Northridge cost & debt at this university →	$70,782	$73,769	$76,213	26
7	San Francisco State University cost & debt at this university →	$61,876	$68,219	$82,073	14
8	CUNY Hunter College	not published	$67,660	not published	13
9	Mercy University	$60,941	$67,420	not published	23
10	Seattle University cost & debt at this university →	$73,900	$67,101	not published	23
11	Aurora University cost & debt at this university →	$63,230	$66,941	$65,026	—
12	Fairfield University	not published	$66,653	not published	17

What this figure does and does not tell you

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 Clinical, Counseling sits below the middle by $8,369.

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.

Clinical, Counseling at other levels

Bachelor's — $31,314 (D)

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

Broadcasting — $44,649 Social Work — $44,960 Community Organization and Advocacy — $45,466 Teaching — $45,668 Forestry — $45,696 Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution — $45,696

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Clinical, Counseling: the questions people ask

How much do Clinical, Counseling graduates earn?

The median master's graduate earns $44,468 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 281 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $45,022.