What Public Administration 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 Public Administration: $50,689, then $66,834, then $65,826. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 39 programs at year one and 51 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: $50,689 at year one, $66,834 at year four, $65,826 at year five. That is 30% growth across the window Scorecard measures, worth $15,137 a year by the fifth year. Fields with flat early curves repay debt slowly; this one's curve works in the borrower’s favor.

By Pell status, the year-one medians for Public Administration are $49,880 (received Pell) and $52,469 (did not), $2,589 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, Public Administration ranks 2 of 5 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $54,309. Its closest sibling is Public Policy Analysis at $76,951, above this field's $65,826. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Public Administration stands number 91 by five-year earnings and number 73 by first-year earnings, and number 5 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 86 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $16,304 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Public Administration, pooled from 26 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $50,689 that balance is 32% of a year's gross pay, roughly 3.9 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $185 a month and $5,931 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

The national median hides the real spread: inside Public Administration, individual programs post five-year medians far from $65,826 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; University of Maryland Global Campus sits first at $102,233.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of University of Maryland Global Campus's counted graduates earn less than $102,233. 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 23.8% of the 2,881 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 $102,233 sits 55% above the national field median of $65,826. Its graduates' debt figure is not published, one of the gaps this page leaves visible rather than filling.