Master's · earnings grade

Is a Marketing degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $56,641 two years after finishing, more than 52% of master's majors. Measured across 193 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 $56,641 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $46,087–$76,460 middle half of US programmes

Over no degree +$17,121 vs $39,520 high-school median

Graduates a year 3,059 193 programmes

Where a Marketing 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	University of Pennsylvania cost & debt at this university →	$155,920	$144,938	$177,786	83
2	University of Wisconsin-Madison cost & debt at this university →	$113,083	$111,992	$130,357	21
3	Vanderbilt University cost & debt at this university →	$108,764	$111,620	$121,754	29
4	Saint Joseph's University - Philadelphia	not published	$103,078	not published	31
5	Southern Methodist University cost & debt at this university →	$89,842	$101,072	$107,302	—
6	University of Southern California cost & debt at this university →	not published	$94,408	not published	28
7	Boston University cost & debt at this university →	$68,346	$82,440	$98,204	169
8	University of Georgia	$71,513	$81,333	$91,218	—
9	Bentley University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$77,715	$83,352	—
10	Suffolk University cost & debt at this university →	$69,895	$76,460	$81,268	7
11	Pace University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$71,015	not published	25
12	Texas A&M University-College Station cost & debt at this university →	$70,955	$69,338	$77,772	25

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $56,641 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $58,693 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 master's major in this dataset reports $52,837, so Marketing sits above the middle by $3,804.

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.

Marketing at other levels

Bachelor's — $42,154 (C)

Scholarships for Marketing students

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

St. Kovachev Scholarship 2016. A must Apply Scholarship in UK... Norwich Business School PhD Studentships at University of East... PhD International Marketing Scholarship 2017 University of Leeds Full and Partial Scholarships for Internat... University of Oulu International Master’s Scholarship Scheme i... Aston Business School Scholarship Award Scheme for Internation...

See all Marketing scholarships →

Study Marketing Programmes listed on ScholarshipsAds.

Marketing — Umeå University Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Marketing — McGill University Business - Marketing — Humber Polytechnic Marketing - Digital Engagement Strategy (Optio... — Centennial College Bachelor of Commerce - Marketing — University of Melbourne Bachelor of Commerce - Marketing Insights and... — Macquarie University

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

Homeland Security — $59,124 Accounting — $59,954 Rehabilitation — $61,516 Healthcare Administration — $62,818 Biotechnology — $63,005 Business Management — $64,169

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Marketing: the questions people ask

How much do Marketing graduates earn?

The median master's graduate earns $56,641 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 34 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $55,856.