Graduates earn a median $81,263 two years after finishing, more than 80% of master's majors. Measured across 180 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
Yes — graduates earn more than most majors at this level.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Chicago cost & debt at this university → | $119,416 | $116,083 | $131,549 | 70 |
| 2 | George Mason University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $109,763 | not published | 7 |
| 3 | Columbia University in the City of New York | $92,259 | $103,078 | $118,085 | 493 |
| 4 | Iowa State University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $91,744 | not published | 12 |
| 5 | Brigham Young University | not published | $90,856 | not published | 17 |
| 6 | Georgetown University | $96,445 | $90,856 | $102,592 | 33 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania State University-World Campus | $96,917 | $87,604 | $90,865 | 66 |
| 8 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus cost & debt at this university → | $96,917 | $87,604 | $90,865 | 8 |
| 9 | West Chester University of Pennsylvania cost & debt at this university → | not published | $86,129 | not published | 27 |
| 10 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign cost & debt at this university → | $86,086 | $83,768 | not published | 103 |
| 11 | CUNY Bernard M Baruch College | $75,517 | $81,969 | not published | 29 |
| 12 | Texas A&M University-College Station cost & debt at this university → | $99,028 | $80,556 | $82,019 | 89 |
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 Statistics sits above the middle by $26,550.
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.
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.