What Accounting and Related Services Graduates Earn

Median earnings at 1, 4, and 5 years (College Scorecard)

Start with the shape of the table: Accounting and Related Services pays $60,125 at the first measured horizon and $78,466 at the last, and those two medians rest on 53,881 and 80,214 graduates counted respectively. The headline figures weight each reporting program by its graduates counted, so the 400-graduate program moves the national number more than the 12-graduate one; the unweighted column beside it shows the middle program, plain and simple.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $78,466, which is $18,341 more than the year-one median of $60,125 (31% growth). Set against the median field overall ($45,010 at year one, $65,763 at year five), this field starts above the pack and ends above it.

Scorecard separates the first-year figure by Pell history for this field: $57,455 for graduates who received Pell, $68,153 for those who did not. The $10,698 difference tracks institutional mix and starting networks far more than it tracks the credential itself, and it is printed here because a Pell student comparing programs deserves the unblended number.

Inside its own CIP family, Accounting and Related Services ranks 10 of 19 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $78,466. Its closest sibling is International Business at $79,058, above this field's $78,466. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Accounting and Related Services stands number 54 by five-year earnings and number 51 by first-year earnings, and number 138 from the lowest median debt. Those three ranks together are the field's fingerprint: high earn rank with a low debt rank is the combination students are actually shopping for, and this field's spread between them is 84 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Accounting and Related Services graduate owe? $22,618, the graduate-weighted median over 585 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 38%, or 4.5 months of gross pay at the $60,125 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $257 a month with $8,228 of interest on top. Model a different balance in the student loan payoff calculator before you borrow it, and sanity-check the degree in the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

One field, many markets: the five-year median for Accounting and Related Services is $78,466 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Georgetown University heads the list at $163,654.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of Georgetown University's counted graduates earn less than $163,654. Weigh any program here against its own price using the net price estimator and the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 0.4% of the 80,214 graduates counted at five years, so the top of the table is a thin slice and not the field's center; and the leading program's five-year median of $163,654 sits 109% above the national field median of $78,466. Its median debt, $16,035, runs below the field median of $22,618, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.