What General Sales, Merchandising and Related Marketing Operations Graduates Earn

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

Start with the shape of the table: General Sales, Merchandising and Related Marketing Operations pays $58,551 at the first measured horizon and $81,609 at the last, and those two medians rest on 2,639 and 2,112 graduates counted respectively. The headline figures weight each reporting program by its graduates counted, so the 400-graduate program moves the national number more than the 12-graduate one; the unweighted column beside it shows the middle program, plain and simple.

Earnings in this field climb $23,058 between the first and fifth year, a 39% 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.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in General Sales, Merchandising and Related Marketing Operations post a median of $53,233, non-recipients $58,525. That $5,292 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, General Sales, Merchandising and Related Marketing Operations ranks 8 of 19 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $78,466. Its closest sibling is Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods at $83,075, above this field's $81,609. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, General Sales, Merchandising and Related Marketing Operations stands number 50 by five-year earnings and number 54 by first-year earnings, and number 30 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 20 places.

The debt side of the same degree

The median graduate in this field leaves school owing $19,043 in federal loans, the graduate-weighted median across the 19 programs reporting debt. That is 33% of the first-year median earnings, or about 3.9 months of gross pay at $58,551 a year. On the standard 10-year plan at the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52%, the payment is $216 a month and interest adds $6,928 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

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 General Sales, Merchandising and Related Marketing Operations among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by Western Governors University at $110,474, against a national field median of $81,609.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; Western Governors University at $110,474 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 17.9% of the 2,112 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 $110,474 sits 35% above the national field median of $81,609. Its graduates' debt figure is not published, one of the gaps this page leaves visible rather than filling.