Graduates earn a median $31,127 two years after finishing, more than 17% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 269 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 | Hope International University | $35,221 | $47,846 | not published | 12 |
| 2 | Nazarene Bible College cost & debt at this university → | $39,270 | $46,478 | $41,240 | 15 |
| 3 | Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College | not published | $38,829 | $37,269 | 1 |
| 4 | The King's University | not published | $37,208 | not published | 15 |
| 5 | University of Northwestern-St Paul | $29,273 | $37,208 | not published | 20 |
| 6 | University of Notre Dame cost & debt at this university → | $20,151 | $35,594 | $39,773 | 51 |
| 7 | Southern Adventist University | not published | $32,925 | not published | 14 |
| 8 | Azusa Pacific University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $32,925 | not published | 2 |
| 9 | Mount St. Mary's University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $32,563 | not published | 4 |
| 10 | Palm Beach Atlantic University | $26,858 | $32,382 | $31,527 | 14 |
| 11 | Northwest University-Center for Online and Extended Education | $33,021 | $31,853 | $38,203 | 48 |
| 12 | Northwest University | $33,021 | $31,853 | $38,203 | 10 |
Two medians are worth separating. $31,127 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 Theological and Ministerial Studies sits below the middle by $5,370.
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.