Graduates earn a median $50,856 two years after finishing, more than 31% of master's majors. Measured across 254 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 | Saint Mary's College of California cost & debt at this university → | not published | $94,408 | $86,536 | 14 |
| 2 | The University of Texas at Austin cost & debt at this university → | $84,623 | $86,129 | not published | 10 |
| 3 | Stony Brook University | $66,820 | $68,443 | $70,944 | 66 |
| 4 | DePaul University cost & debt at this university → | $53,765 | $64,493 | not published | 8 |
| 5 | Georgetown University | $59,689 | $63,997 | $73,877 | 17 |
| 6 | CUNY Graduate School and University Center | $47,383 | $56,415 | $46,477 | 36 |
| 7 | University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus | $52,036 | $53,358 | $56,233 | 135 |
| 8 | New York University cost & debt at this university → | $43,383 | $52,607 | $50,923 | 104 |
| 9 | Fort Hays State University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $51,829 | $52,488 | 23 |
| 10 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University | $45,949 | $50,856 | $60,314 | — |
| 11 | Harvard University cost & debt at this university → | $63,274 | $50,856 | not published | — |
| 12 | Emory University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $50,439 | not published | — |
Two medians are worth separating. $50,856 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $46,087 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 master's major in this dataset reports $52,837, so Liberal Arts and Sciences sits below the middle by $1,981.
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.
Tell us what you need and we will come back with the lenders that actually fund students from your country — including options with no US co-signer. No obligation, and we never charge you.
Classified by the Department of Education as Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies and Humanities (CIP 2401). 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.