What Agricultural Business and Management Graduates Earn

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

Nothing on this page is a survey response or a recruiter's claim: the $54,078 year-one median and the $73,931 year-five median for Agricultural Business and Management come from federal earnings records pooled across 140 bachelor's programs. The headline median weights programs by graduates counted (4,758 at year one); the second column is the unweighted median program, printed so the method stays visible.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $73,931, which is $19,853 more than the year-one median of $54,078 (37% 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.

The Pell split adds a second lens on the $54,078 year-one median: graduates who received Pell Grants earn a median of $54,754, and graduates who did not earn $55,840, a gap of $1,086. Read it as a map of where each group studied and the networks they carried in, not as the degree paying two different wages for the same work.

Inside its own CIP family, Agricultural Business and Management ranks 2 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $57,898. Its closest sibling is Food Science and Technology at $74,423, above this field's $73,931. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Agricultural Business and Management stands number 68 by five-year earnings and number 67 by first-year earnings, and number 2 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 66 places.

The debt side of the same degree

The median graduate in this field leaves school owing $15,340 in federal loans, the graduate-weighted median across the 58 programs reporting debt. That is 28% of the first-year median earnings, or about 3.4 months of gross pay at $54,078 a year. On the standard 10-year plan at the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52%, the payment is $174 a month and interest adds $5,581 over the life of the loan. Price your own borrowing with the student loan payoff calculator, and test the whole degree in the college ROI calculator or the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

Where a student studies inside this field matters at least as much as the field itself. These five programs post the strongest five-year medians in Agricultural Business and Management among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by Cornell University at $151,443, against a national field median of $73,931.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of Cornell University's counted graduates earn less than $151,443. 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 10.0% of the 5,247 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 $151,443 sits 105% above the national field median of $73,931. Its median debt, $13,000, runs below the field median of $15,340, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.