Bachelor's · earnings grade

Is a Civil Engineering degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $61,814 two years after finishing, more than 83% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 313 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.

The verdict on the money

Yes — graduates earn more than most majors at this level.

Median earnings $61,814 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $57,318–$63,921 middle half of US programmes

Over no degree +$22,294 vs $39,520 high-school median

Graduates a year 14,335 313 programmes

Where a Civil Engineering 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	Santa Clara University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$79,473	$88,047	32
2	San Jose State University cost & debt at this university →	$70,515	$74,845	$82,323	127
3	Stevens Institute of Technology cost & debt at this university →	$69,771	$74,702	$81,434	38
4	University of Southern California cost & debt at this university →	$75,576	$74,576	$85,981	28
5	George Washington University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$74,307	not published	15
6	Southern Methodist University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$73,737	not published	13
7	Cornell University cost & debt at this university →	$67,621	$73,321	$82,416	36
8	California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo cost & debt at this university →	$72,381	$72,645	$82,834	148
9	Rice University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$71,957	not published	15
10	Manhattan University	$68,261	$71,351	$80,815	100
11	University of California-Berkeley cost & debt at this university →	$69,327	$71,351	$80,483	103
12	University of Notre Dame cost & debt at this university →	$67,169	$70,680	$82,198	28

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $61,814 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $60,523 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 Civil Engineering sits above the middle by $25,317.

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.

Civil Engineering at other levels

Master's — $71,015 (B)

Scholarships for Civil Engineering students

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

GIBB Bursary for South African Students, 2016 University of Salford Scholarships for International Students... ADG Engineering Bursary at Griffith University in Australia, 2... ISSCE International Scholarships in School of Civil Engineerin... CTGU Full and Partial Undergraduate Scholarship for Non-Chines... PhD Scholarship Engineering, Architecture and Information Tech...

See all Civil Engineering scholarships →

Study Civil Engineering Programmes listed on ScholarshipsAds.

Civil Engineering — University of Toronto Civil Engineering and Computer Science — Northeastern University Civil Engineering - Water — University of Waterloo Civil Engineering and Computing Technology — University of Ottawa Civil Engineering - Sustainable and Resilient... — University of Ottawa Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering — University of New South Wa...

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

Nuclear Engineering — $60,899 Engineering Science — $61,365 Engineering — $61,516 Electrical & Electronic Engineering Technology — $61,702 Human Computer Interaction — $62,012 Computer Programming — $62,260

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Civil Engineering: the questions people ask

How much do Civil Engineering graduates earn?

The median bachelor's graduate earns $61,814 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 237 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $61,387.