What Religion/Religious 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 Religion/Religious Studies: $20,979, then $43,377, then $48,482. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 34 programs at year one and 45 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

Earnings in this field climb $27,503 between the first and fifth year, a 131% rise that trails 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.

Scorecard separates the first-year figure by Pell history for this field: $41,580 for graduates who received Pell, $44,208 for those who did not. The $2,628 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, Religion/Religious Studies ranks 2 of 2 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $48,482. Its closest sibling is Philosophy at $64,700, above this field's $48,482. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Religion/Religious Studies stands number 168 by five-year earnings and number 182 by first-year earnings, and number 173 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 5 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Religion/Religious Studies graduate owe? $28,374, the graduate-weighted median over 10 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 135%, or 16.2 months of gross pay at the $20,979 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $322 a month with $10,322 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

One field, many markets: the five-year median for Religion/Religious Studies is $48,482 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Beth Medrash Govoha heads the list at $63,085.

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 38.1% of the 3,340 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 $63,085 sits 30% above the national field median of $48,482. Its graduates' debt figure is not published, one of the gaps this page leaves visible rather than filling.