Graduates earn a median $31,640 two years after finishing, more than 36% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 99 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
Financially it is a slower start than most majors at this level — worth planning your borrowing around.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California State University-Bakersfield cost & debt at this university → | not published | $58,673 | $63,823 | 6 |
| 2 | University of Rhode Island | $41,342 | $44,933 | $59,775 | 34 |
| 3 | University of New Hampshire-Main Campus | $40,705 | $44,933 | $64,832 | 7 |
| 4 | Baldwin Wallace University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $44,384 | not published | — |
| 5 | Central Michigan University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $44,384 | not published | 1 |
| 6 | California State University-Channel Islands cost & debt at this university → | $41,104 | $42,712 | $49,170 | — |
| 7 | Metropolitan State University of Denver | $46,567 | $42,402 | $51,226 | — |
| 8 | Marist University | not published | $41,565 | not published | 11 |
| 9 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo cost & debt at this university → | $31,009 | $40,281 | $46,604 | 129 |
| 10 | St Petersburg College cost & debt at this university → | not published | $39,741 | $39,708 | 28 |
| 11 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins | not published | $39,153 | $51,640 | 51 |
| 12 | Texas State University cost & debt at this university → | $36,583 | $36,848 | not published | 9 |
Two medians are worth separating. $31,640 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $34,527 is what the typical programme reports, counting a class of twenty the same as a class of two thousand. The weighted figure is lower here, which means the larger programmes in this field pay less than the small 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 $42,682, so Environmental/Natural Resources Management sits below the middle by $11,042.
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.
Classified by the Department of Education as Environmental/Natural Resources Management and Policy (CIP 0302). 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.