Bachelor's · earnings grade

Is a Sociology degree worth it?

Graduates earn a median $32,569 two years after finishing, more than 27% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 995 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 $32,569 2 years after finishing · per graduate

Typical range $28,236–$34,847 middle half of US programmes

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

Graduates a year 25,941 995 programmes

Where a Sociology 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	Harvard University cost & debt at this university →	$58,277	$56,641	$51,257	33
2	Tufts University cost & debt at this university →	$33,199	$55,693	not published	47
3	Barnard College cost & debt at this university →	$43,701	$50,856	$60,852	33
4	University of Chicago cost & debt at this university →	not published	$48,432	not published	22
5	New York University cost & debt at this university →	$42,066	$47,260	$52,241	55
6	Minnesota State University Moorhead cost & debt at this university →	$38,016	$45,500	$45,809	17
7	Duke University cost & debt at this university →	$60,357	$45,305	$47,803	42
8	Princeton University cost & debt at this university →	$44,901	$44,942	not published	34
9	Dickinson College cost & debt at this university →	$31,788	$44,356	not published	9
10	Columbia University in the City of New York	$53,374	$44,170	$55,020	70
11	Mount Holyoke College cost & debt at this university →	not published	$43,798	not published	16
12	Bradley University cost & debt at this university →	not published	$43,798	not published	12

What this figure does and does not tell you

Two medians are worth separating. $32,569 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $31,443 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 Sociology sits below the middle by $3,928.

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.

Sociology at other levels

Master's — $40,560 (D)

Scholarships for Sociology students

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

ICDD PhD Scholarship Positions in Social and Agricultural Scie... 20 College of Social Sciences Scholarships at University of Gl... 2017 International Graduate Fellowships at American University... Pears Foundation PhD Scholarships at University of Sussex in U... Visiting Postdoctoral Fellowships for International Students a... Harvard South Asia Institute Raghunathan Family PhD Fellowship...

See all Sociology scholarships →

Study Sociology Programmes listed on ScholarshipsAds.

MSc in Sociology of Law — Lund University Sociology (The Sociology of Marginality and Ex... — University of Cambridge Critical Sociology — Brock University Sociology - Gender and Women's Studies — Lakehead University Development Sociology — Cornell University Community and Environmental Sociology — University of Wisconsin–Ma...

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

Foods, Nutrition — $31,468 Health Services — $31,594 Liberal Arts and Sciences — $31,830 Mental and Social Health Services — $31,854 International & Globalization Studies — $32,004 Allied Health — $32,162

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Sociology: the questions people ask

How much do Sociology graduates earn?

The median bachelor's graduate earns $32,569 two years after finishing (weighting each programme by how many students it graduates), across 552 US programmes that publish the figure. One year out it is $30,586.