Not surprisingly, last week’s release of program-level earnings data in the newest version of the College Scorecard got a lot of attention both inside and outside the higher education community. I have gotten quite a few requests from reporters to dive deeper into the data, and I am happy to oblige with a look at which programs have graduates with the highest and lowest median salaries approximately one year after graduation.
First, a few methodological notes. I decided to look at three groups of credentials: certificates and associate degrees from two-year colleges, bachelor’s degrees from four-year colleges, and graduate credentials (certificates, master’s degrees and doctoral/first professional degrees) from research universities. I defined my samples by merging 2018 Carnegie classifications into the Scorecard data and only analyzing colleges with more than five programs that had enough observations in the dataset to have median earnings reported. So think of this as a look at some of the larger programs of study, with the caveat that the Scorecard’s definition of “program” often encompasses multiple academic majors as they are typically defined.