Graduates earn a median $29,685 two years after finishing, more than 14% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 1,390 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
On earnings alone this is among the lowest-paying majors at this level. That does not make it a bad subject, but it does make the debt you take on for it matter more.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barnard College cost & debt at this university → | $38,848 | $48,432 | $50,891 | — |
| 2 | Colgate University cost & debt at this university → | $48,179 | $47,260 | $57,947 | — |
| 3 | University of Chicago cost & debt at this university → | not published | $45,128 | $43,021 | — |
| 4 | Bowdoin College cost & debt at this university → | not published | $44,971 | not published | — |
| 5 | Cornell University cost & debt at this university → | $36,163 | $44,747 | $51,275 | 70 |
| 6 | Lafayette College cost & debt at this university → | not published | $44,170 | $48,201 | — |
| 7 | Trinity College | $32,400 | $43,798 | not published | 12 |
| 8 | Swarthmore College cost & debt at this university → | not published | $43,426 | not published | — |
| 9 | Middlebury College cost & debt at this university → | $34,769 | $42,682 | $41,771 | — |
| 10 | Lehigh University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $42,682 | $52,508 | 63 |
| 11 | Dickinson College cost & debt at this university → | $36,712 | $42,682 | not published | 30 |
| 12 | Boston College | $37,262 | $42,682 | $51,564 | 111 |
Two medians are worth separating. $29,685 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $29,141 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 Psychology sits below the middle by $6,812.
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.
Whatever the subject pays, the money you do not borrow is the money you keep.
Tell us what you need and we will come back with the lenders that actually fund students from your country — including options with no US co-signer. No obligation, and we never charge you.
Classified by the Department of Education as Psychology, General (CIP 4201). 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.