What Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration, Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing Graduates Earn

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

For Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration, Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing, the federal file supports exactly three earnings snapshots, and this page prints all of them: $89,974 one year after graduation, $96,132 at four years, $98,387 at five. The weighting note matters: medians here count graduates, not programs, across 355,303 people in the five-year pool, which is why they can sit above or below the unweighted middle program shown in the next column.

From $89,974 in the first year to $98,387 in the fifth, earnings grow 9% ($8,413). For scale, the median bachelor's field in the Scorecard file grows from $45,010 to $65,763 over the same span, so this field's early-career slope is gentler than typical.

The Pell split adds a second lens on the $89,974 year-one median: graduates who received Pell Grants earn a median of $89,762, and graduates who did not earn $86,730, a gap of $3,032. Read it as a map of where each group studied and the networks they carried in, not as the degree paying two different wages for the same work.

Inside its own CIP family, Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration, Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing ranks 2 of 14 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $64,868. Its closest sibling is Clinical/Medical Laboratory Science/Research and Allied Professions at $78,486, below this field's $98,387. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration, Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing stands number 16 by five-year earnings and number 2 by first-year earnings, and number 119 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 103 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $21,656 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration, Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing, pooled from 997 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $89,974 that balance is 24% of a year's gross pay, roughly 2.9 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $246 a month and $7,878 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

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 Registered Nursing, Nursing Administration, Nursing Research and Clinical Nursing among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by San Francisco State University at $159,614, against a national field median of $98,387.

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 0.2% of the 355,303 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 $159,614 sits 62% above the national field median of $98,387. Its median debt, $13,331, runs below the field median of $21,656, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.