Graduates earn a median $37,484 two years after finishing, more than 51% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 602 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
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.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Syracuse University cost & debt at this university → | $47,988 | $57,318 | not published | 29 |
| 2 | Northeastern Illinois University | not published | $52,107 | not published | 26 |
| 3 | Boston University cost & debt at this university → | $46,446 | $50,606 | not published | 7 |
| 4 | Kean University | $49,445 | $49,855 | $51,443 | 8 |
| 5 | Central Washington University cost & debt at this university → | $47,108 | $47,064 | $47,530 | 7 |
| 6 | Towson University cost & debt at this university → | $46,717 | $46,991 | $48,962 | 162 |
| 7 | Southern Connecticut State University cost & debt at this university → | $45,526 | $46,738 | $44,135 | 36 |
| 8 | University of Hawaii at Manoa cost & debt at this university → | $45,781 | $46,673 | $51,908 | 22 |
| 9 | State University of New York at Cortland | $43,864 | $46,087 | $53,247 | 94 |
| 10 | Hood College cost & debt at this university → | $41,433 | $45,980 | $47,940 | 14 |
| 11 | West Chester University of Pennsylvania cost & debt at this university → | $43,057 | $45,867 | $46,610 | 57 |
| 12 | Western Washington University cost & debt at this university → | $49,253 | $45,826 | $49,672 | 102 |
Two medians are worth separating. $37,484 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $37,568 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 bachelor's major in this dataset reports $36,497, so Special Education sits above the middle by $987.
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 Special Education and Teaching (CIP 1310). 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.