What Computer and Information Sciences, General 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 $69,663 year-one median and the $96,454 year-five median for Computer and Information Sciences, General come from federal earnings records pooled across 968 bachelor's programs. The headline median weights programs by graduates counted (64,063 at year one); the second column is the unweighted median program, printed so the method stays visible.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $96,454, which is $26,791 more than the year-one median of $69,663 (38% 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.

By Pell status, the year-one medians for Computer and Information Sciences, General are $67,538 (received Pell) and $84,517 (did not), $16,979 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, Computer and Information Sciences, General ranks 4 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $82,542. Its closest sibling is Computer/Information Technology Administration and Management at $96,720, above this field's $96,454. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Computer and Information Sciences, General stands number 22 by five-year earnings and number 32 by first-year earnings, and number 128 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 106 places.

The debt side of the same degree

The median graduate in this field leaves school owing $22,250 in federal loans, the graduate-weighted median across the 384 programs reporting debt. That is 32% of the first-year median earnings, or about 3.8 months of gross pay at $69,663 a year. On the standard 10-year plan at the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52%, the payment is $253 a month and interest adds $8,094 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

The national median hides the real spread: inside Computer and Information Sciences, General, individual programs post five-year medians far from $96,454 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; Johns Hopkins University sits first at $213,177.

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 0.6% of the 51,191 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 $213,177 sits 121% above the national field median of $96,454. Its median debt, $7,625, runs below the field median of $22,250, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.