Graduates earn a median $62,012 two years after finishing, more than 55% of master's majors. Measured across 485 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 | Loyola University Chicago cost & debt at this university → | $100,817 | $220,906 | $179,958 | — |
| 2 | Dartmouth College cost & debt at this university → | not published | $197,142 | not published | 46 |
| 3 | University of California-Irvine cost & debt at this university → | $122,124 | $190,536 | $178,048 | — |
| 4 | Northwestern University | $129,419 | $182,280 | not published | 28 |
| 5 | University of Pennsylvania cost & debt at this university → | $169,238 | $174,994 | $208,033 | 122 |
| 6 | Vanderbilt University cost & debt at this university → | $129,825 | $130,517 | $144,008 | 23 |
| 7 | CUNY Bernard M Baruch College | $100,496 | $126,504 | $121,131 | 17 |
| 8 | University of Miami cost & debt at this university → | not published | $125,015 | $172,147 | 9 |
| 9 | University of California-San Francisco | $121,323 | $122,038 | $134,883 | 27 |
| 10 | New England College | $96,183 | $109,763 | $120,051 | 37 |
| 11 | University of California-San Diego cost & debt at this university → | not published | $97,959 | not published | 10 |
| 12 | Oregon Health & Science University | $108,927 | $97,452 | $103,263 | 85 |
Two medians are worth separating. $62,012 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $62,818 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 master's major in this dataset reports $54,713, so Healthcare Administration sits above the middle by $7,299.
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 Health and Medical Administrative Services (CIP 5107). 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.