What Specialized Sales, Merchandising and Marketing Operations 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 Specialized Sales, Merchandising and Marketing Operations: $46,968, then $61,055, then $59,993. Each median is graduate-weighted, built from 35 programs at year one and 44 at year five, and the unweighted program median sits alongside so a reader can see how much the weighting itself is doing.

Five years out, the median graduate earns $59,993, which is $13,025 more than the year-one median of $46,968 (28% growth). Set against the median field overall ($45,010 at year one, $65,763 at year five), this field starts above the pack and ends below it.

Scorecard separates the first-year figure by Pell history for this field: $46,165 for graduates who received Pell, $55,567 for those who did not. The $9,402 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, Specialized Sales, Merchandising and Marketing Operations ranks 18 of 19 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $78,466. Its closest sibling is Hospitality Administration/Management at $59,895, below this field's $59,993. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Specialized Sales, Merchandising and Marketing Operations stands number 117 by five-year earnings and number 80 by first-year earnings, and number 151 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 34 places.

The debt side of the same degree

Debt first, because earnings get the headlines: $23,625 is the median federal loan balance at graduation in Specialized Sales, Merchandising and Marketing Operations, pooled from 22 reporting programs. Against year-one earnings of $46,968 that balance is 50% of a year's gross pay, roughly 6.0 months of it. The standard 10-year repayment at 6.52% (the 2026-27 undergraduate Direct Loan rate) runs $268 a month and $8,595 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 Specialized Sales, Merchandising and Marketing Operations, individual programs post five-year medians far from $59,993 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; Saint Joseph's University - Philadelphia sits first at $89,034.

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 26.8% of the 4,067 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 $89,034 sits 48% above the national field median of $59,993. Its median debt, $24,335, runs above the field median of $23,625, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.