What Veterinary/Animal Health Technologies/Technicians Graduates Earn

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

Start with the shape of the table: Veterinary/Animal Health Technologies/Technicians pays $36,997 at the first measured horizon and $43,109 at the last, and those two medians rest on 531 and 406 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 $43,109, which is $6,112 more than the year-one median of $36,997 (17% 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.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Veterinary/Animal Health Technologies/Technicians post a median of $34,829, non-recipients $38,001. That $3,172 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, Veterinary/Animal Health Technologies/Technicians ranks 8 of 8 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $57,898. Its closest sibling is Agricultural Production Operations at $52,075, above this field's $43,109. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Veterinary/Animal Health Technologies/Technicians stands number 181 by five-year earnings and number 160 by first-year earnings, and number 126 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 55 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Veterinary/Animal Health Technologies/Technicians graduate owe? $22,022, the graduate-weighted median over 13 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 60%, or 7.1 months of gross pay at the $36,997 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $250 a month with $8,012 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

The national median hides the real spread: inside Veterinary/Animal Health Technologies/Technicians, individual programs post five-year medians far from $43,109 in both directions. Below are the highest, filtered to programs with 30 or more graduates counted at five years; Michigan State University sits first at $47,451.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of Michigan State University's counted graduates earn less than $47,451. Weigh any program here against its own price using the net price estimator and the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 59.4% of the 406 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 $47,451 sits 10% above the national field median of $43,109. Its median debt, $26,500, runs above the field median of $22,022, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.