What Foods, Nutrition, and Related Services Graduates Earn

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

For Foods, Nutrition, and Related Services, the federal file supports exactly three earnings snapshots, and this page prints all of them: $42,057 one year after graduation, $50,571 at four years, $50,840 at five. The weighting note matters: medians here count graduates, not programs, across 6,956 people in the five-year pool, which is why they can sit above or below the unweighted middle program shown in the next column.

The trajectory is the story here: $42,057 at year one, $50,571 at year four, $50,840 at year five. That is 21% growth across the window Scorecard measures, worth $8,783 a year by the fifth year. Fields with flat early curves repay debt slowly; this one's curve works in the borrower’s favor.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Foods, Nutrition, and Related Services post a median of $41,284, non-recipients $43,822. That $2,538 gap is the distance between two different student populations studying under one field name, and it narrows or widens by institution, which the program table below hints at.

Inside its own CIP family, Foods, Nutrition, and Related Services ranks 4 of 5 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $53,457. Its closest sibling is Human Development, Family Studies, and Related Services at $49,623, below this field's $50,840. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Foods, Nutrition, and Related Services stands number 159 by five-year earnings and number 125 by first-year earnings, and number 166 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 7 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $25,000 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Foods, Nutrition, and Related Services, pooled from 27 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $42,057 that balance is 59% of a year's gross pay, roughly 7.1 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $284 a month and $9,095 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

One field, many markets: the five-year median for Foods, Nutrition, and Related Services is $50,840 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University heads the list at $74,854.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University at $74,854 is evidence about a place and a mix of students, not a wage offer. Put the same programs' prices next to these figures with the degree cost calculator and the net price estimator before ranking anything.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 9.0% of the 6,956 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 $74,854 sits 47% above the national field median of $50,840. Its median debt, $20,500, runs below the field median of $25,000, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.