Bachelor's · earnings grade

Is a Architecture degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $43,798 two years after finishing, more than 64% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 130 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.

C

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 $43,798 2 years after finishing · per graduate
Typical range $39,369–$50,141 middle half of US programmes
Over no degree +$4,278 vs $39,520 high-school median
Graduates a year 3,714 130 programmes

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

#University1 yr out2 yrs out3 yrs outGraduates/yr
1 University of Notre Dame cost & debt at this university → $58,141 $57,679 $67,248 54
2 Boston Architectural College $56,964 $56,931 $67,570 16
3 California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo cost & debt at this university → $55,714 $55,884 $63,723
4 Oklahoma State University-Main Campus cost & debt at this university → $51,285 $55,286 not published
5 University of San Francisco cost & debt at this university → not published $55,286 $65,104 23
6 California State Polytechnic University-Pomona $56,226 $55,286 $60,596 120
7 Drexel University cost & debt at this university → $56,215 $54,576 $60,105 43
8 The University of Texas at Austin cost & debt at this university → $51,821 $54,570 $58,062 47
9 Academy of Art University not published $53,810 not published
10 Carnegie Mellon University cost & debt at this university → $44,216 $53,775 $60,559 11
11 Cornell University cost & debt at this university → $52,794 $53,358 $59,738
12 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute cost & debt at this university → $52,282 $52,316 $59,016 56

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $43,798 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $46,087 is what the typical programme reports, counting a class of twenty the same as a class of two thousand. The weighted figure is lower here, which means the larger programmes in this field pay less than the small 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 Architecture sits above the middle by $7,301.

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.

Architecture at other levels

Scholarships for Architecture students

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

See all Architecture scholarships →

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Architecture: the questions people ask

How much do Architecture graduates earn?
The median bachelor's graduate earns $43,798 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 87 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $46,245.
Is a Architecture degree worth it?
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. The median graduate earns $4,278 a year more than a US worker whose highest qualification is a high-school diploma.
What is the salary range for Architecture?
Half of US programmes report medians between $39,369 and $50,141. Where you study moves this figure more than most applicants expect.
How many people graduate in Architecture each year?
About 3,714 students complete a bachelor's in this field each year across 130 US programmes.
Does this include student debt?
No — and deliberately. The Department of Education publishes earnings by field of study but not debt, so any "debt by major" figure you see elsewhere is an estimate. Debt is published per institution, which is why our university pages carry it and this page does not.

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.