What Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering 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 $68,347 year-one median and the $85,102 year-five median for Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering come from federal earnings records pooled across 139 bachelor's programs. The headline median weights programs by graduates counted (1,394 at year one); the second column is the unweighted median program, printed so the method stays visible.

Earnings in this field climb $16,755 between the first and fifth year, a 25% rise that beats the all-fields pattern (the median field in this dataset pays $45,010 at year one and $65,763 at year five). Early-career growth this shape usually means the first job is a foothold: licensure, a portfolio, or a first promotion does the heavy lifting.

Inside its own CIP family, Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering ranks 17 of 17 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $97,669. Its closest sibling is Civil Engineering at $90,385, above this field's $85,102. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering stands number 43 by five-year earnings and number 36 by first-year earnings, and number 130 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 87 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Across the 39 programs that report debt for Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering, the median graduate owes $22,300. Set beside the $68,347 year-one median, the debt is 33% of first-year gross earnings, about 3.9 months of pay before tax. Repaid on the standard 10-year schedule at 6.52%, it costs $253 monthly and $8,113 in interest. The student loan payoff calculator replays that schedule with your numbers, and the college ROI calculator weighs the full cost against the earnings table above.

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 Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo at $100,240, against a national field median of $85,102.

High program medians concentrate in high-wage metros and selective intakes, so read $100,240 as a market fact before reading it as a quality verdict. Costs for the same programs are checkable in the degree cost calculator and the net price estimator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 14.2% of the 1,325 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 $100,240 sits 18% above the national field median of $85,102. Its median debt, $16,109, runs below the field median of $22,300, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.