Fields of Study: Earnings and Debt by Major
A college's average outcome is a blend of very different programmes, and for most families the programme is the real purchase. These 32 field pages are built from the College Scorecard field-of-study file, covering the bachelor's fields with the most programmes that report both earnings and debt in this release. Each page gives the median programme earnings at the four-year measurement point, the median programme debt, the spread between the middle half of programmes, and a top-colleges table that always shows debt next to earnings — never earnings alone.
Read a field page in three passes. First, the medians: they tell you what a typical programme in that field produces, which is the right anchor before any single college impresses you. Second, the spread: a wide spread means college choice matters a lot inside that field, while a narrow spread means the field itself, more than the campus, drives the outcome. Third, the top table, restricted to programmes with at least fifteen graduates counted, where the honest comparison is the pairing — a programme earning slightly less with far less debt may be the stronger outcome for a student who will borrow the full amount.
One limit applies to every page in this section, and we state it on each one rather than burying it: the field-of-study file does not publish completion rates by major. Programme earnings and debt are real; programme completion is not available, so we link you to institution-level completion on the college profiles and say so explicitly. A field that looks lucrative at colleges with weak overall completion is a different bet from the same field at a college where most students finish, and only the paired reading shows you that difference.
Note on this data: Figures on this page come from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard release retrieved in October 2026. Earnings cover students who received federal financial aid and were working and not enrolled at the measurement point; they are medians for a defined past cohort, not a promise of what any individual graduate will earn. Check the college and the Scorecard for the most current figures before you decide.