What Agriculture, General Graduates Earn

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

The three rows below are the whole earnings story Scorecard can tell about Agriculture, General: $44,432, then $53,547, then $57,022. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 44 programs at year one and 43 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $57,022, which is $12,590 more than the year-one median of $44,432 (28% growth). Set against the median field overall ($45,010 at year one, $65,763 at year five), this field starts below the pack and ends below it.

By Pell status, the year-one medians for Agriculture, General are $40,095 (received Pell) and $47,372 (did not), $7,277 apart. The split is a reminder that a field median averages over very different starting points; the institution a student picks inside the field moves their personal figure more than the field label does.

Inside its own CIP family, Agriculture, General ranks 6 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $57,898. Its closest sibling is Animal Sciences at $57,898, above this field's $57,022. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Agriculture, General stands number 132 by five-year earnings and number 98 by first-year earnings, and number 53 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 79 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $19,500 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Agriculture, General, pooled from 35 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $44,432 that balance is 44% of a year's gross pay, roughly 5.3 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $222 a month and $7,094 in total interest. Your own balance and rate belong in the student loan payoff calculator; the degree-level verdict belongs in the college ROI calculator and the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

The national median hides the real spread: inside Agriculture, General, individual programs post five-year medians far from $57,022 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo sits first at $85,804.

Treat the top of this table as a research list, not a ranking to enroll by: medians reflect local labor markets and student mix as much as teaching. The honest comparison pairs each program's earnings here with its net price from the net price estimator and its four-year total from the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 26.3% of the 2,117 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 $85,804 sits 50% above the national field median of $57,022. Its graduates' debt figure is not published, one of the gaps this page leaves visible rather than filling.