The Highest and Lowest Earning Bachelor's Majors, and What the Data Hides

The size of the gap

Median earnings across bachelor's degree majors range from about $58,000 to $146,000 a year, according to The Major Payoff , a 2025 report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Petroleum engineering leads all majors at a median of $146,000. Education and public service fields sit at the bottom, with a median around $58,000. Over a working lifetime, the report puts the gap between the highest and lowest paying majors at about $3.4 million.

Bachelor's degree holders overall earn a median 70 percent more than high school graduates, and carry a lower unemployment rate, 2.9 percent versus 6.2 percent, per the same report. The degree itself pays off on average. What you study inside that degree changes the payoff by a wide margin.

STEM majors dominate the top, but not evenly

STEM fields hold most of the highest paying majors, and this category alone contains the widest spread of any group. Within STEM, median earnings range from $64,000 for a major like miscellaneous agriculture up to $146,000 for petroleum engineering. Business majors also appear near the top. A STEM label on a major does not guarantee a top salary. Engineering and computer-heavy majors post the highest numbers, while agriculture and life science majors inside the same broad STEM category post numbers close to the humanities.

Education and human services sit at the bottom

Education, human services, and several arts majors report the lowest median earnings, in the high $50,000s to low $60,000s. Humanities and arts majors as a group cover a narrower range, roughly $58,000 to $73,000, and the Georgetown report notes that 14 of 19 humanities and arts majors still earn above the 25th percentile of STEM earnings, around $65,000. Low pay in these fields tracks the pay scales of the industries graduates enter, teaching and nonprofit work, more than a lack of skill or effort.

What a single number hides

A median earnings figure by major flattens three sources of variation that matter more to your own outcome than the major label. First, the school you attend changes earnings within the same major, since a computer science graduate from a school with strong employer recruiting pipelines out-earns a computer science graduate from a school without them. Second, your location matters, since the same job pays differently in a high cost, high demand metro area than in a smaller regional market. Third, the specific job you land inside a broad major category drives most of the spread. Political science covers everyone from a $139,380 median political scientist role to lower paying advocacy and nonprofit jobs, all under one major label, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook .

Early-career pay looks different from mid-career pay

Starting salary surveys tell a different story than the prime-age earnings data above. NACE's 2025 salary survey put the average projected starting salary for all Class of 2025 bachelor's graduates at $68,680, with engineering graduates highest at an average of $78,731 and math and sciences majors third highest at $69,709, according to NACE . These starting figures sit well below the Georgetown prime-age medians above, since they capture your first job rather than your earnings 10 or 20 years into a career. A major that starts you off modestly can still catch up by your late 30s or 40s if the field has strong long-term earnings growth, and a major with a hot starting salary does not guarantee it stays ahead over a full career.

High pay can mean high volatility

The highest paying majors, like petroleum engineering, sit inside industries tied to commodity prices and economic cycles, so pay and hiring swing more than in steadier fields like nursing or accounting. A high median does not mean every graduate in that major earns near it every year. Weigh how much pay swings inside a field, not only where its median sits, when you compare a volatile high-paying major against a steadier mid-paying one.

Check your own school's numbers

The College Scorecard , run by the U.S. Department of Education, publishes earnings data by field of study for individual schools, not just national averages. Look up your specific school and intended major before you rely on a national figure, since the gap between a national median and your school's actual outcomes can be large in either direction.

How to use this data

Treat major-level earnings data as one input, not the deciding factor. Weigh it against your total cost of attendance and expected debt, since a mid-earning major with low debt often leaves you better off than a high-earning major with heavy loans. Check your target school's field-level outcomes on College Scorecard, and remember that the job you land, not the major title alone, drives most of your actual paycheck.