What Physiology, Pathology and Related Sciences Graduates Earn

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

For Physiology, Pathology and Related Sciences, the federal file supports exactly three earnings snapshots, and this page prints all of them: $36,093 one year after graduation, $60,556 at four years, $68,886 at five. The weighting note matters: medians here count graduates, not programs, across 5,353 people in the five-year pool, which is why they can sit above or below the unweighted middle program shown in the next column.

Earnings in this field climb $32,793 between the first and fifth year, a 91% 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.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Physiology, Pathology and Related Sciences post a median of $35,176, non-recipients $35,187. That $11 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, Physiology, Pathology and Related Sciences ranks 7 of 10 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $70,226. Its closest sibling is Neurobiology and Neurosciences at $70,226, above this field's $68,886. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Physiology, Pathology and Related Sciences stands number 83 by five-year earnings and number 165 by first-year earnings, and number 45 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 38 places.

The debt side of the same degree

The median graduate in this field leaves school owing $19,500 in federal loans, the graduate-weighted median across the 88 programs reporting debt. That is 54% of the first-year median earnings, or about 6.5 months of gross pay at $36,093 a year. On the standard 10-year plan at the 2026-27 undergraduate rate of 6.52%, the payment is $222 a month and interest adds $7,094 over the life of the loan. Price your own borrowing with the student loan payoff calculator, and test the whole degree in the college ROI calculator or the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

The national median hides the real spread: inside Physiology, Pathology and Related Sciences, individual programs post five-year medians far from $68,886 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; Nova Southeastern University sits first at $126,227.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; Nova Southeastern University at $126,227 is evidence about a place and a mix of students, not a wage offer. Put the same programs' prices next to these figures with the degree cost calculator and the net price estimator before ranking anything.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 8.3% of the 5,353 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 $126,227 sits 83% above the national field median of $68,886. Its median debt, $12,500, runs below the field median of $19,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.