What Human Services, General Graduates Earn

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

Start with the shape of the table: Human Services, General pays $43,618 at the first measured horizon and $50,301 at the last, and those two medians rest on 6,071 and 9,560 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.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $50,301, which is $6,683 more than the year-one median of $43,618 (15% growth). Set against the median field overall ($45,010 at year one, $65,763 at year five), this field starts below the pack and ends below it.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Human Services, General post a median of $41,156, non-recipients $39,332. That $1,824 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, Human Services, General ranks 5 of 5 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $54,309. Its closest sibling is Social Work at $53,349, above this field's $50,301. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Human Services, General stands number 161 by five-year earnings and number 108 by first-year earnings, and number 167 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 6 places.

The debt side of the same degree

The median graduate in this field leaves school owing $25,000 in federal loans, the graduate-weighted median across the 77 programs reporting debt. That is 57% of the first-year median earnings, or about 6.9 months of gross pay at $43,618 a year. On the standard 10-year plan at the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52%, the payment is $284 a month and interest adds $9,095 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 Human Services, General among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by California State University-Monterey Bay at $65,327, against a national field median of $50,301.

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 3.2% of the 9,560 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 $65,327 sits 30% above the national field median of $50,301. Its median debt, $10,000, runs below the field median of $25,000, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.