Graduates earn a median $94,075 two years after finishing, more than 88% of master's majors. Measured across 365 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
Yes, on the money — this is one of the best-paying majors at this level in the country.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Pennsylvania cost & debt at this university → | $68,404 | $198,043 | $227,605 | 348 |
| 2 | Northwestern University cost & debt at this university → | $118,780 | $111,323 | $130,124 | 2,055 |
| 3 | Texas A&M University-College Station cost & debt at this university → | $127,883 | $109,763 | not published | 30 |
| 4 | Boston University cost & debt at this university → | $80,155 | $106,421 | $117,665 | 370 |
| 5 | George Washington University cost & debt at this university → | $127,076 | $106,421 | not published | 110 |
| 6 | The University of Texas at Austin cost & debt at this university → | $86,247 | $102,706 | $108,654 | 193 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania State University-World Campus | $100,372 | $100,455 | $107,874 | 156 |
| 8 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus cost & debt at this university → | $100,372 | $100,455 | $107,874 | 149 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Harrisburg | $100,372 | $100,455 | $107,874 | 51 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Great Valley | $100,372 | $100,455 | $107,874 | 15 |
| 11 | The University of Tennessee-Knoxville cost & debt at this university → | $84,024 | $99,662 | $108,614 | 386 |
| 12 | University of Southern California cost & debt at this university → | $93,128 | $94,408 | $109,077 | 1,272 |
Two medians are worth separating. $94,075 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $87,604 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 Management Sciences sits above the middle by $41,238.
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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Classified by the Department of Education as Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods (CIP 5213). 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.