What Legal Professions and Studies, Other Graduates Earn

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

Nothing on this page is a survey response or a recruiter's claim: the $40,560 year-one median and the $67,497 year-five median for Legal Professions and Studies, Other come from federal earnings records pooled across 36 bachelor's programs. The headline median weights programs by graduates counted (419 at year one); the second column is the unweighted median program, printed so the method stays visible.

From $40,560 in the first year to $67,497 in the fifth, earnings grow 66% ($26,937). 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 steeper than typical.

The Pell split adds a second lens on the $40,560 year-one median: graduates who received Pell Grants earn a median of $43,441, and graduates who did not earn $33,532, a gap of $9,909. Read it as a map of where each group studied and the networks they carried in, not as the degree paying two different wages for the same work.

Inside its own CIP family, Legal Professions and Studies, Other ranks 1 of 3 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $65,626. Its closest sibling is Non-Professional Legal Studies at $65,626, below this field's $67,497. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Legal Professions and Studies, Other stands number 85 by five-year earnings and number 133 by first-year earnings, and number 118 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 33 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Legal Professions and Studies, Other graduate owe? $21,622, the graduate-weighted median over 8 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 53%, or 6.4 months of gross pay at the $40,560 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $246 a month with $7,866 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

Program medians scatter widely around the national $67,497 five-year figure. The table ranks the reporting programs by their five-year median, keeping only programs with at least 30 graduates in that count so a tiny cohort cannot top the list by luck. Drexel University leads it at $103,024.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; Drexel University at $103,024 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 52.4% of the 435 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 $103,024 sits 53% above the national field median of $67,497. Its graduates' debt figure is not published, one of the gaps this page leaves visible rather than filling.