Master's · earnings grade

Is a Accounting degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $61,516 two years after finishing, more than 54% of master's majors. Measured across 616 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.

The verdict on the money

It pays around the middle. What you earn will depend more on where you study and what you do with it than on the subject label.

Median earnings $61,516 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $57,318–$64,493 middle half of US programmes

Over no degree +$21,996 vs $39,520 high-school median

Graduates a year 15,854 616 programmes

Where a Accounting degree pays best US programmes ranked on their own graduates' median earnings two years out.

#	University	1 yr out	2 yrs out	3 yrs out	Graduates/yr
1	New York University cost & debt at this university →	$73,943	$77,297	$101,323	148
2	Dallas Baptist University cost & debt at this university →	$59,116	$76,460	$76,435	—
3	Mercy University	$66,128	$75,706	$81,420	14
4	Old Dominion University cost & debt at this university →	$63,833	$74,576	not published	14
5	Vanderbilt University cost & debt at this university →	$63,852	$73,321	$82,878	46
6	Northeastern State University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$72,796	$81,036	16
7	Seton Hall University cost & debt at this university →	$69,696	$72,693	$84,791	35
8	University of Massachusetts-Boston cost & debt at this university →	$64,099	$72,134	$81,557	25
9	University of Maryland Global Campus	$70,676	$71,798	$73,403	92
10	Golden Gate University cost & debt at this university →	$70,847	$71,734	$85,000	30
11	Fordham University cost & debt at this university →	$68,578	$71,575	$87,004	66
12	CUNY Hunter College	not published	$71,015	$79,246	23

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $61,516 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $59,954 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 $52,837, so Accounting sits above the middle by $8,679.

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.

Accounting at other levels

Bachelor's — $47,260 (B)

Scholarships for Accounting students

Whatever the subject pays, the money you do not borrow is the money you keep.

Norwich Business School PhD Studentships at University of East... MSc Scholarships for International Students at University of E... University of Leeds Full and Partial Scholarships for Internat... 20 College of Social Sciences Scholarships at University of Gl... Undergraduate Scholarships in Economics and Finance at ICEF, H... School of Management Fully Funded PhD Studentships: Graduate T...

See all Accounting scholarships →

Study Accounting Programmes listed on ScholarshipsAds.

Accounting and Management Control — Stockholm University Accounting and Finance — Lund University Accounting and Taxation — Istanbul Medipol Universit... Accounting Specialist — University of Toronto Accounting — Trent University Accounting and Financial Decision Making — Northeastern University

Majors that pay more at this level Closest first — useful if you are still choosing.

Rehabilitation — $61,516 Healthcare Administration — $62,818 Biotechnology — $63,005 Business Management — $64,169 Economics — $64,290 Business Administration — $64,706

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Accounting: the questions people ask

How much do Accounting graduates earn?

The median master's graduate earns $61,516 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 362 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $59,634.