What Mathematics 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 Mathematics: $54,422, then $72,318, then $76,867. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 244 programs at year one and 312 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

The trajectory is the story here: $54,422 at year one, $72,318 at year four, $76,867 at year five. That is 41% growth across the window Scorecard measures, worth $22,445 a year by the fifth year. Fields with flat early curves repay debt slowly; this one's curve works in the borrower’s favor.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Mathematics post a median of $54,863, non-recipients $60,682. That $5,819 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, Mathematics ranks 3 of 3 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $98,009. Its closest sibling is Statistics at $98,009, above this field's $76,867. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Mathematics stands number 59 by five-year earnings and number 64 by first-year earnings, and number 26 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

Across the 202 programs that report debt for Mathematics, the median graduate owes $19,000. Set beside the $54,422 year-one median, the debt is 35% of first-year gross earnings, about 4.2 months of pay before tax. Repaid on the standard 10-year schedule at 6.52%, it costs $216 monthly and $6,912 in interest. The student loan payoff calculator replays that schedule with your numbers, and the college ROI calculator weighs the full cost against the earnings table above.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

The national median hides the real spread: inside Mathematics, individual programs post five-year medians far from $76,867 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; Massachusetts Institute of Technology sits first at $201,041.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's counted graduates earn less than $201,041. Weigh any program here against its own price using the net price estimator and the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 1.9% of the 12,625 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 $201,041 sits 162% above the national field median of $76,867. Its graduates' debt figure is not published, one of the gaps this page leaves visible rather than filling.