What Mechanical Engineering Related Technologies/Technicians Graduates Earn

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

Start with the shape of the table: Mechanical Engineering Related Technologies/Technicians pays $71,043 at the first measured horizon and $85,449 at the last, and those two medians rest on 3,165 and 3,137 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.

Earnings in this field climb $14,406 between the first and fifth year, a 20% rise that beats the all-fields pattern (the median field in this dataset pays $45,010 at year one and $65,763 at year five). Early-career growth this shape usually means the first job is a foothold: licensure, a portfolio, or a first promotion does the heavy lifting.

Scorecard separates the first-year figure by Pell history for this field: $69,514 for graduates who received Pell, $72,322 for those who did not. The $2,808 difference tracks institutional mix and starting networks far more than it tracks the credential itself, and it is printed here because a Pell student comparing programs deserves the unblended number.

Inside its own CIP family, Mechanical Engineering Related Technologies/Technicians ranks 7 of 10 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $86,833. Its closest sibling is Engineering Technologies/Technicians, General at $84,256, below this field's $85,449. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Mechanical Engineering Related Technologies/Technicians stands number 41 by five-year earnings and number 28 by first-year earnings, and number 139 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 98 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Across the 52 programs that report debt for Mechanical Engineering Related Technologies/Technicians, the median graduate owes $22,696. Set beside the $71,043 year-one median, the debt is 32% of first-year gross earnings, about 3.8 months of pay before tax. Repaid on the standard 10-year schedule at 6.52%, it costs $258 monthly and $8,257 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 Mechanical Engineering Related Technologies/Technicians, individual programs post five-year medians far from $85,449 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; Cal Poly Maritime Academy sits first at $124,774.

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 6.7% of the 3,137 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 $124,774 sits 46% above the national field median of $85,449. Its median debt, $26,935, runs above the field median of $22,696, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.