Bachelor's · earnings grade

Is a Microbiology degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $33,459 two years after finishing, more than 40% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 123 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.

The verdict on the money

Financially it is a slower start than most majors at this level — worth planning your borrowing around.

Median earnings $33,459 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $29,685–$38,289 middle half of US programmes

Over no degree — vs $39,520 high-school median

Graduates a year 3,108 123 programmes

Where a Microbiology 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	North Carolina State University at Raleigh	$39,532	$47,260	not published	32
2	San Jose State University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$44,835	not published	—
3	North Dakota State University-Main Campus cost & debt at this university →	$32,924	$44,091	$44,896	14
4	California State University-Long Beach cost & debt at this university →	$41,546	$43,798	not published	22
5	Miami University-Oxford	$38,948	$42,235	not published	23
6	Weber State University cost & debt at this university →	$30,584	$41,565	$46,195	44
7	University of California-Berkeley cost & debt at this university →	$38,349	$41,565	not published	58
8	San Francisco State University cost & debt at this university →	$47,260	$40,017	$53,914	—
9	Texas A&M University-College Station cost & debt at this university →	not published	$39,369	not published	35
10	Iowa State University cost & debt at this university →	$35,690	$39,369	$45,961	32
11	University of California-Santa Barbara cost & debt at this university →	$37,928	$39,369	not published	49
12	Texas State University cost & debt at this university →	$32,190	$39,009	$43,383	39

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $33,459 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $34,207 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 Microbiology sits below the middle by $3,038.

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.

Microbiology at other levels

Master's — $48,432 (F)

Scholarships for Microbiology students

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

Biosciences International Masters Scholarship at University of... PhD Position in Microbiology-Comparative Systemsbiology in Ant... Postdoctoral Position in Periodontal Pathogenesis at Karolinsk... PhD Fellowships in Life Science at University of Lausanne in S... Antarctica Baillet Latour Antarctica Research Fellowship 2018 AGRA Borel Global Fellowship Program at the University of Dela...

See all Microbiology scholarships →

Study Microbiology Programmes listed on ScholarshipsAds.

Applied Microbiology — Lund University BSc Biology (Immunology & Microbiology) — Uppsala University Clinical Microbiology — Umeå University Microbiology and Immunology — Dalhousie University Microbiology and Immunology — Dalhousie University Microbiology and Immunology — Dalhousie University

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

Community Organization and Advocacy — $34,290 Criminal Justice — $34,420 Environmental & Natural Resources Management — $34,527 Geological — $34,615 Computer Software and Media Applications — $34,963 International Relations — $35,060

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Microbiology: the questions people ask

How much do Microbiology graduates earn?

The median bachelor's graduate earns $33,459 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 56 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $32,921.