What Manufacturing Engineering Graduates Earn

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

For Manufacturing Engineering, the federal file supports exactly three earnings snapshots, and this page prints all of them: $76,612 one year after graduation, $88,995 at four years, $92,450 at five. The weighting note matters: medians here count graduates, not programs, across 480 people in the five-year pool, which is why they can sit above or below the unweighted middle program shown in the next column.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $92,450, which is $15,838 more than the year-one median of $76,612 (21% 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.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Manufacturing Engineering post a median of $78,138, non-recipients $75,439. That $2,699 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, Manufacturing Engineering ranks 14 of 17 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $97,669. Its closest sibling is Engineering, General at $93,327, above this field's $92,450. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Manufacturing Engineering stands number 28 by five-year earnings and number 13 by first-year earnings, and number 64 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 36 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $19,823 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Manufacturing Engineering, pooled from 9 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $76,612 that balance is 26% of a year's gross pay, roughly 3.1 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $225 a month and $7,212 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 Manufacturing Engineering is $92,450 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Brigham Young University heads the list at $94,330.

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 43.1% of the 480 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 $94,330 sits 2% above the national field median of $92,450. Its median debt, $7,500, runs below the field median of $19,823, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.