What Food Science and Technology 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 Food Science and Technology: $54,906, then $70,571, then $74,423. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 24 programs at year one and 28 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

From $54,906 in the first year to $74,423 in the fifth, earnings grow 36% ($19,517). For scale, the median bachelor's field in the Scorecard file grows from $45,010 to $65,763 over the same span, so this field's early-career slope is gentler than typical.

Scorecard separates the first-year figure by Pell history for this field: $59,839 for graduates who received Pell, $54,446 for those who did not. The $5,393 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, Food Science and Technology ranks 1 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $57,898. Its closest sibling is Agricultural Business and Management at $73,931, below this field's $74,423. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Food Science and Technology stands number 66 by five-year earnings and number 63 by first-year earnings, and number 20 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 46 places.

The debt side of the same degree

The median graduate in this field leaves school owing $18,673 in federal loans, the graduate-weighted median across the 11 programs reporting debt. That is 34% of the first-year median earnings, or about 4.1 months of gross pay at $54,906 a year. On the standard 10-year plan at the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52%, the payment is $212 a month and interest adds $6,793 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

One field, many markets: the five-year median for Food Science and Technology is $74,423 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Kansas State University heads the list at $94,245.

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 19.1% of the 1,186 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 $94,245 sits 27% above the national field median of $74,423. Its median debt, $23,250, runs above the field median of $18,673, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.