Graduates earn a median $101,072 two years after finishing, more than 98% of master's majors. Measured across 94 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 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology cost & debt at this university → | $133,685 | $137,214 | $155,079 | 178 |
| 2 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Worldwide | $101,436 | $117,572 | not published | 134 |
| 3 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach | $101,436 | $117,572 | not published | 5 |
| 4 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor cost & debt at this university → | $102,847 | $116,354 | $116,465 | 83 |
| 5 | Johns Hopkins University cost & debt at this university → | $114,155 | $111,563 | $131,276 | 192 |
| 6 | George Mason University cost & debt at this university → | $96,837 | $109,763 | $127,586 | 19 |
| 7 | University of Southern California cost & debt at this university → | $125,714 | $106,421 | not published | 43 |
| 8 | The University of Texas at Dallas cost & debt at this university → | $93,153 | $101,406 | not published | 53 |
| 9 | Southern Methodist University cost & debt at this university → | $104,021 | $101,072 | $112,196 | 63 |
| 10 | George Washington University cost & debt at this university → | $106,809 | $101,072 | $112,813 | 110 |
| 11 | Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus cost & debt at this university → | $117,910 | $100,075 | not published | 32 |
| 12 | Pennsylvania State University-World Campus | $96,574 | $99,291 | $104,370 | 89 |
Two medians are worth separating. $101,072 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $99,291 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 $54,713, so Systems Engineering sits above the middle by $46,359.
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.
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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.