What Non-Professional Legal Studies 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 Non-Professional Legal Studies: $43,920, then $63,487, then $65,626. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 37 programs at year one and 35 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $65,626, which is $21,706 more than the year-one median of $43,920 (49% growth). Set against the median field overall ($45,010 at year one, $65,763 at year five), this field starts below the pack and ends below it.

By Pell status, the year-one medians for Non-Professional Legal Studies are $42,394 (received Pell) and $44,817 (did not), $2,423 apart. The split is a reminder that a field median averages over very different starting points; the institution a student picks inside the field moves their personal figure more than the field label does.

Inside its own CIP family, Non-Professional Legal Studies ranks 2 of 3 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $65,626. Its closest sibling is Legal Professions and Studies, Other at $67,497, above this field's $65,626. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Non-Professional Legal Studies stands number 93 by five-year earnings and number 106 by first-year earnings, and number 72 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 21 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Across the 38 programs that report debt for Non-Professional Legal Studies, the median graduate owes $20,000. Set beside the $43,920 year-one median, the debt is 46% of first-year gross earnings, about 5.5 months of pay before tax. Repaid on the standard 10-year schedule at 6.52%, it costs $227 monthly and $7,276 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 Non-Professional Legal Studies, individual programs post five-year medians far from $65,626 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; University of Miami sits first at $120,108.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of University of Miami's counted graduates earn less than $120,108. 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 15.4% of the 2,184 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 $120,108 sits 83% above the national field median of $65,626. Its median debt, $18,875, runs below the field median of $20,000, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.