Bachelor's · earnings grade

Is a Social Sciences degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $34,704 two years after finishing, more than 36% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 348 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 $34,704 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $29,565–$37,568 middle half of US programmes

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

Graduates a year 5,560 348 programmes

Where a Social Sciences 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	Manhattan University	$47,290	$64,493	$73,231	6
2	Vanderbilt University cost & debt at this university →	$56,276	$56,544	$72,481	302
3	University of Washington-Seattle Campus	$47,335	$53,358	not published	73
4	Harvard University cost & debt at this university →	$42,926	$52,107	$62,452	189
5	New York University cost & debt at this university →	$40,666	$49,019	$54,034	50
6	Thomas Edison State University cost & debt at this university →	$42,906	$48,432	$46,830	88
7	University of Southern California cost & debt at this university →	$28,365	$46,087	$45,887	18
8	The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley cost & debt at this university →	not published	$42,682	$46,516	18
9	University of Massachusetts Global	$32,726	$41,193	$45,587	2
10	University of Wisconsin-Platteville cost & debt at this university →	not published	$41,193	not published	10
11	Central Washington University cost & debt at this university →	$36,440	$40,580	$46,430	50
12	Colorado State University Global cost & debt at this university →	$40,667	$40,527	$42,468	3

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $34,704 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $33,237 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 Social Sciences sits below the middle by $1,793.

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.

Social Sciences at other levels

Master's — $38,481 (F)

Scholarships for Social Sciences students

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

Netherlands Amsterdam Excellence Scholarship Ampere Scholarship of Excellence - ENS Paris, France Ph.D. Scholarships in Innovation Studies at University of Stav... 75 Fully-funded PhD Studentships at Nottingham Trent Universit... 150 Fully Funded PhD Degree Scholarships for International Stu... Mildred Blaxter Postdoctoral Fellowships for International App...

See all Social Sciences scholarships →

Study Social Sciences Programmes listed on ScholarshipsAds.

Secondary Education (Social Sciences) — B.Ed — McGill University Bachelor of Arts and Social Sciences (Honours) — University of New South Wa... Flexible Double Degree in Advanced Arts, Socia... — Australian National Univer... Flexible Double Degree in Arts, Social Science... — Australian National Univer... Doctor of Philosophy in Social Sciences — Australian National Univer... Political and Social Sciences — Pompeu Fabra University

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

Gerontology — $33,397 Public Health — $33,593 Communications — $33,710 Criminology — $33,926 Political Science — $33,993 Education — $33,993

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Social Sciences: the questions people ask

How much do Social Sciences graduates earn?

The median bachelor's graduate earns $34,704 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 86 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $32,131.