What Public Health Graduates Earn

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

Start with the shape of the table: Public Health pays $43,165 at the first measured horizon and $62,420 at the last, and those two medians rest on 18,274 and 17,390 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.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $62,420, which is $19,255 more than the year-one median of $43,165 (45% 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.

Scorecard separates the first-year figure by Pell history for this field: $42,497 for graduates who received Pell, $43,390 for those who did not. The $893 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, Public Health ranks 9 of 14 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $64,868. Its closest sibling is Communication Disorders Sciences and Services at $61,941, below this field's $62,420. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Public Health stands number 104 by five-year earnings and number 112 by first-year earnings, and number 88 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 16 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Public Health graduate owe? $20,500, the graduate-weighted median over 228 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 47%, or 5.7 months of gross pay at the $43,165 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $233 a month with $7,458 of interest on top. Model a different balance in the student loan payoff calculator before you borrow it, and sanity-check the degree in the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

Where a student studies inside this field matters at least as much as the field itself. These five programs post the strongest five-year medians in Public Health among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by Santa Clara University at $98,929, against a national field median of $62,420.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; Santa Clara University at $98,929 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 1.7% of the 17,390 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 $98,929 sits 58% above the national field median of $62,420. Its median debt, $13,000, runs below the field median of $20,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.