What Marketing 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 $54,132 year-one median and the $75,085 year-five median for Marketing come from federal earnings records pooled across 924 bachelor's programs. The headline median weights programs by graduates counted (51,473 at year one); the second column is the unweighted median program, printed so the method stays visible.

The trajectory is the story here: $54,132 at year one, $70,776 at year four, $75,085 at year five. That is 39% growth across the window Scorecard measures, worth $20,953 a year by the fifth year. Fields with flat early curves repay debt slowly; this one's curve works in the borrower’s favor.

The Pell split adds a second lens on the $54,132 year-one median: graduates who received Pell Grants earn a median of $50,977, and graduates who did not earn $57,989, a gap of $7,012. 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, Marketing ranks 12 of 19 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $78,466. Its closest sibling is Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services, Other at $76,079, above this field's $75,085. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Marketing stands number 62 by five-year earnings and number 65 by first-year earnings, and number 87 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 25 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $20,500 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Marketing, pooled from 475 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $54,132 that balance is 38% of a year's gross pay, roughly 4.5 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $233 a month and $7,458 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 Marketing is $75,085 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and University of Pennsylvania heads the list at $127,236.

High program medians concentrate in high-wage metros and selective intakes, so read $127,236 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 0.7% of the 50,041 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 $127,236 sits 69% above the national field median of $75,085. Its median debt, $7,500, runs below the field median of $20,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.