Graduates earn a median $34,942 two years after finishing, more than 36% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 43 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 | University of Northern Iowa cost & debt at this university → | $56,361 | $39,927 | not published | 8 |
| 2 | University of Maryland Global Campus | not published | $38,289 | not published | 11 |
| 3 | Western Oregon University | $33,454 | $36,848 | $39,879 | 11 |
| 4 | Pennsylvania Western University | $33,905 | $35,060 | $40,510 | — |
| 5 | California State University-Sacramento cost & debt at this university → | $32,043 | $34,942 | $41,017 | 18 |
| 6 | University of South Florida cost & debt at this university → | $24,858 | $31,852 | $36,199 | 2 |
| 7 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus cost & debt at this university → | $28,599 | $31,133 | $38,165 | 4 |
| 8 | Barton College | not published | $30,228 | not published | 3 |
| 9 | The University of Arizona Global Campus | $34,233 | $29,685 | $22,069 | 3 |
| 10 | Kansas State University cost & debt at this university → | $32,287 | $25,967 | not published | 23 |
Two medians are worth separating. $34,942 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $33,397 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 $36,497, so Gerontology sits below the middle by $1,555.
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.