PayScale’s 2017-18 College Salary Report Reveals the Top 50 Bachelor’s Schools by Earning Potential

SEATTLE, Aug. 29, 2017 -- PayScale, Inc., the world’s leading provider of on-demand compensation data and software, issued its annual College Salary Report for the 2017-18 school year. PayScale’s College Salary Report provides salary data for alumni of a total of 2,441 associate and bachelor’s degree-granting institutions throughout the U.S.

Highlights from the 2017-18 report:

• The top of the bachelor’s-only list is dominated by the Ivy League, elite technical universities and military academies. Harvey Mudd tops the list with a mid-career median pay number that is $8,000 above Princeton, the second-ranked school. MIT, SUNY Maritime College and the United States Military Academy at West Point round out the top five.
   
• When examining all alumni with a Bachelor’s, including those that go on to earn higher degrees, Stanford jumps from 10^th to 1^st in PayScale’s rankings. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) also enters the top five, in a tie for third place with MIT.
   
• Engineering and math dominate the bachelor’s rankings for highest-paying major. The median pay for early career STEM majors is $51,400, while median pay for liberal arts majors is $41,300.
   
• Helene Fuld College of Nursing, Pacific Union College and Labouré College top the list of two-year degree-granting schools with the highest-earning alumni. The two-year degrees with the highest earning potential are Instrumentation Technology, Radiation Therapy and Management Information Systems (MIS).

“Our report provides a good data point for students and families as they select a school and major. Increasingly, students want to understand the career and income opportunities associated with their college education,” said PayScale Vice President Lydia Frank. “While earning potential should not be the only consideration, it’s an important one, especially when considering the cost of each student’s education.”

PayScale substantially expanded the scope of this year’s College Salary Report by increasing the number of schools included in past years by more than 1,000. The number of associate degree-granting institutions increased from 381 to 1,186 (an additional 805 schools). PayScale saw similar increases in the lists of best schools for each major focus. For example, the number of schools in the “Best Schools for Education Majors by Salary Potential” list increased from 16 to 243.

For more information about the report, visit: http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report and for more information about the report methodology, please visit: http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/methodology

About PayScale:
PayScale offers modern compensation software and real-time, data-driven insights for employees and employers alike. More than 6,500 customers, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, use PayScale to power pay decisions for more than 14 million employees. These companies include Dish Network, Getty Images, Skullcandy, Bloomberg BNA and Time Warner. For more information, please visit: www.payscale.com or follow PayScale on Twitter: https://twitter.com/payscale.

Press Contact:
Erica Beyer 
Email: [email protected] 
Tel: 206.206.0727