Graduates earn a median $46,283 two years after finishing, more than 32% of master's majors. Measured across 235 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
Financially it is a slower start than most majors at this level — worth planning your borrowing around.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Johns Hopkins University cost & debt at this university → | $82,667 | $86,867 | $103,776 | 104 |
| 2 | George Washington University cost & debt at this university → | $71,685 | $67,995 | $76,708 | 176 |
| 3 | American Public University System cost & debt at this university → | $49,162 | $64,493 | $63,492 | 31 |
| 4 | George Mason University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $55,512 | $74,195 | 10 |
| 5 | Pace University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $54,035 | $64,911 | 8 |
| 6 | Georgetown University | $58,963 | $52,107 | not published | 41 |
| 7 | University of Florida cost & debt at this university → | not published | $50,856 | not published | 16 |
| 8 | Texas State University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $49,058 | not published | 17 |
| 9 | University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus | not published | $49,019 | $60,338 | 19 |
| 10 | CUNY Brooklyn College | not published | $47,260 | not published | 11 |
| 11 | Appalachian State University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $46,478 | not published | 10 |
| 12 | St. John's University-New York | $43,933 | $46,478 | $54,680 | 22 |
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 Political Science sits below the middle by $8,430.
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.
Classified by the Department of Education as Political Science and Government (CIP 4510). 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.