The College Scorecard graduate earnings data has been used to identify which college produces the highest-earning former students in each of the 50 US states, with median pay four years after completion ranging from $62,000 to $162,000 depending on institution and major mix. The analysis, published by Business Insider reporter Kristine Villarroel, draws on Department of Education data covering the roughly 13 million students who receive Title IV federal financial aid.
How the College Scorecard Graduate Earnings Data Works
The College Scorecard tracks net college costs, student debt, completion rates, and earnings outcomes for federal-aid recipients. The earnings figure used here measures median annual pay four years after a student completes their degree, not at graduation, and not for the full student population, but specifically for those who received some form of federal financial aid during their studies. Approximately 55% of undergraduate students in the 2019-2020 school year received such aid, according to the department’s own data, which means the figures are broadly representative but carry a consistent methodological caveat: graduates who never touched federal aid are not counted.
For this exercise, the list covers public or private nonprofit four-year schools only. Major mix matters substantially: institutions dominated by engineering, computer science, and health sciences programmes tend to sit at the top of each state’s table, while schools whose most popular fields include education, psychology, or liberal arts tend to cluster lower. The Public Policy Institute of California has noted that graduates with degrees in education administration and teaching have a median annual wage of $57,000, which helps explain why schools with large teacher-training enrolments rarely appear at the top of state-level earnings tables, even where they are among the largest institutions by headcount.
The Spread: $62,000 to $162,000 Across State Lines
The earnings spread across states is wide. At the lower end, two states record top-institution medians of $62,000 four years after graduation. At the upper end, one school, whose most popular majors are computer science, mathematics, and mechanical engineering, produces graduates with median earnings of $162,000, the highest figure in the dataset. A second school, with top majors in computer science, mechanical engineering, and physics, reaches $153,000. Both are in states with large technology-sector labour markets.
Several states see their top school buoyed by aviation and aerospace: three institutions whose most popular programmes include aeronautics, aviation technology, and aerospace engineering each record median earnings of $94,000, placing them at the head of their respective state tables. At the other end of the spectrum, schools whose graduates earn the most within their state but whose top programmes include nursing combined with fields such as criminal justice or elementary education tend to sit in the $62,000-$76,000 range.
The College Scorecard graduate earnings picture also highlights the value of specialist health-sciences programmes. One school dominated by pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences records a state-leading $132,000 median, while several nursing-heavy institutions reach the $77,000-$89,000 band.
What the Data Can and Cannot Tell You
There are real limits to reading too much into any single institution’s position. Because the College Scorecard earnings data applies only to former federal-aid recipients, selective schools with wealthier student bodies may be underrepresented. Specialised schools (those with a narrow programme focus in high-earning fields) are structurally more likely to top a state table than a broad-based university where the major mix dilutes average outcomes. Business Insider’s methodology explicitly acknowledges this, noting that the list is best read as a map of earnings outcomes rather than a definitive ranking of institutional quality.
The institutional variation also maps onto well-documented differences in graduate returns at the field level. The University of Houston has published data showing that its graduates earn more than double the median yearly income of high school graduates both nationally ($32,842) and within Texas, a comparison that underlines how earnings-outcome data, when used carefully, can make the case for specific institutions’ return on investment rather than for higher education in aggregate.
The major-mix effect is perhaps the most actionable finding for prospective students: within any given institution, the gap between the highest- and lowest-earning fields routinely exceeds the gap between states. Choosing a school with strong outcomes in computer science or engineering in a state where the relevant labour market is thin may still outperform choosing a broad university in a competitive metropolitan area.
The full state-by-state College Scorecard graduate earnings breakdown, including named institutions and their top majors as reported by Niche, appears in Business Insider’s original data piece.