Graduates earn a median $38,289 two years after finishing, more than 17% of master's majors. Measured across 194 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 | Jewish Theological Seminary of America | not published | $57,318 | not published | 22 |
| 2 | Denver Seminary | not published | $47,260 | not published | 2 |
| 3 | Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary | not published | $44,572 | not published | 39 |
| 4 | Wesley Theological Seminary | $54,435 | $43,957 | $47,976 | — |
| 5 | Duke University cost & debt at this university → | $49,269 | $41,342 | $29,408 | 24 |
| 6 | Hartford International University for Religion and Peace | not published | $39,927 | not published | 19 |
| 7 | Beth Medrash Govoha | not published | $38,289 | not published | 633 |
| 8 | Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School | not published | $31,133 | not published | — |
| 9 | Olivet Nazarene University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $30,409 | not published | 1 |
Two medians are worth separating. $38,289 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $41,342 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 Religion & Religious Studies sits below the middle by $14,548.
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.
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Classified by the Department of Education as Religion/Religious Studies (CIP 3802). 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.