Graduates earn a median $30,035 two years after finishing, more than 17% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 226 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 | Harvard University cost & debt at this university → | $53,927 | $57,318 | $52,583 | 101 |
| 2 | Amherst College cost & debt at this university → | $41,688 | $46,087 | not published | 66 |
| 3 | Tufts University cost & debt at this university → | $34,754 | $43,798 | not published | 97 |
| 4 | Columbia University in the City of New York | $41,906 | $42,682 | $44,923 | 166 |
| 5 | Northwestern University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $39,369 | not published | 35 |
| 6 | University of Chicago cost & debt at this university → | $40,175 | $39,015 | $63,074 | 99 |
| 7 | Northeastern University Professional Programs | $35,413 | $38,018 | $50,111 | 16 |
| 8 | Northeastern University cost & debt at this university → | $35,413 | $38,018 | $50,111 | 101 |
| 9 | Boston University cost & debt at this university → | $34,431 | $38,018 | $38,835 | — |
| 10 | Trinity Washington University | $37,867 | $37,980 | $43,509 | — |
| 11 | Mount St. Mary's University cost & debt at this university → | $32,282 | $37,748 | $39,690 | 30 |
| 12 | Metropolitan State University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $35,060 | not published | 15 |
Two medians are worth separating. $30,035 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $29,685 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 Research and Experimental Psychology sits below the middle by $6,462.
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.