What Human Resources Management and Services 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 Human Resources Management and Services: $56,434, then $68,274, then $72,054. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 190 programs at year one and 192 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $72,054, which is $15,620 more than the year-one median of $56,434 (28% 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 Human Resources Management and Services are $55,868 (received Pell) and $61,285 (did not), $5,417 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, Human Resources Management and Services ranks 13 of 19 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $78,466. Its closest sibling is Business Administration, Management and Operations at $70,460, below this field's $72,054. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Human Resources Management and Services stands number 71 by five-year earnings and number 58 by first-year earnings, and number 144 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 73 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Human Resources Management and Services graduate owe? $23,250, the graduate-weighted median over 128 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 41%, or 4.9 months of gross pay at the $56,434 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $264 a month with $8,458 of interest on top. Model a different balance in the student loan payoff calculator before you borrow it, and sanity-check the degree in the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

One field, many markets: the five-year median for Human Resources Management and Services is $72,054 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Cornell University heads the list at $122,271.

High program medians concentrate in high-wage metros and selective intakes, so read $122,271 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 2.4% of the 18,638 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 $122,271 sits 70% above the national field median of $72,054. Its median debt, $12,000, runs below the field median of $23,250, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.