What Urban Studies/Affairs Graduates Earn

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

Nothing on this page is a survey response or a recruiter's claim: the $44,874 year-one median and the $71,108 year-five median for Urban Studies/Affairs come from federal earnings records pooled across 108 bachelor's programs. The headline median weights programs by graduates counted (635 at year one); the second column is the unweighted median program, printed so the method stays visible.

Earnings in this field climb $26,234 between the first and fifth year, a 58% rise that beats 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.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Urban Studies/Affairs post a median of $39,012, non-recipients $50,144. That $11,132 gap is the distance between two different student populations studying under one field name, and it narrows or widens by institution, which the program table below hints at.

Inside its own CIP family, Urban Studies/Affairs ranks 3 of 10 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $63,401. Its closest sibling is Political Science and Government at $70,944, below this field's $71,108. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Urban Studies/Affairs stands number 75 by five-year earnings and number 92 by first-year earnings, and number 19 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 56 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Urban Studies/Affairs graduate owe? $18,500, the graduate-weighted median over 16 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 41%, or 4.9 months of gross pay at the $44,874 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $210 a month with $6,730 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 Urban Studies/Affairs is $71,108 nationally, yet the strongest programs below run far ahead of it. The ranking keeps a 30-graduate floor under every entry, and Rutgers University-Camden heads the list at $82,844.

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 22.9% of the 778 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 $82,844 sits 17% above the national field median of $71,108. Its median debt, $23,500, runs above the field median of $18,500, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.