Graduates earn a median $39,214 two years after finishing, more than 10% of master's majors. Measured across 73 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 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus cost & debt at this university → | $81,247 | $82,440 | not published | — |
| 2 | Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Great Valley | $81,247 | $82,440 | not published | 4 |
| 3 | Boston University cost & debt at this university → | $49,767 | $57,318 | $60,826 | — |
| 4 | University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus | not published | $49,058 | not published | 8 |
| 5 | University of Chicago cost & debt at this university → | $39,749 | $39,214 | $47,962 | 706 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania Western University | $41,793 | $37,748 | $38,888 | — |
| 7 | Bellevue University cost & debt at this university → | $39,917 | $37,568 | $38,075 | 38 |
| 8 | Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University cost & debt at this university → | $38,870 | $37,208 | $39,832 | 24 |
| 9 | California State University-San Bernardino cost & debt at this university → | not published | $33,993 | not published | 4 |
| 10 | Grambling State University | not published | $31,839 | $35,951 | 9 |
Two medians are worth separating. $39,214 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $38,481 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 master's major in this dataset reports $52,837, so Social Sciences sits below the middle by $13,623.
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.
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Classified by the Department of Education as Social Sciences, General (CIP 4501). 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.