Graduates earn a median $38,289 two years after finishing, more than 44% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 58 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 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh | $54,960 | $66,941 | $74,337 | 72 |
| 2 | Oregon State University-Cascades Campus | $39,710 | $52,107 | $56,757 | — |
| 3 | Oregon State University cost & debt at this university → | $39,710 | $52,107 | $56,757 | 4 |
| 4 | Mississippi State University cost & debt at this university → | $41,301 | $44,170 | $47,532 | 37 |
| 5 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities | $39,187 | $43,798 | not published | 16 |
| 6 | University of Georgia | $42,980 | $43,798 | $50,948 | 13 |
| 7 | Michigan Technological University cost & debt at this university → | $39,262 | $43,240 | $51,874 | 17 |
| 8 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo cost & debt at this university → | $35,417 | $40,768 | $44,890 | 46 |
| 9 | Auburn University cost & debt at this university → | $47,039 | $40,461 | $51,530 | 31 |
| 10 | University of Nevada-Reno cost & debt at this university → | $33,598 | $39,927 | not published | 11 |
| 11 | Stephen F Austin State University cost & debt at this university → | $37,014 | $39,909 | not published | 41 |
| 12 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University | $38,479 | $38,289 | $43,980 | 81 |
Two medians are worth separating. $38,289 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $38,019 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 $42,682, so Forestry sits below the middle by $4,393.
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.
Whatever the subject pays, the money you do not borrow is the money you keep.
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.