Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Agricultural Business (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Agricultural Business earn a median of $66,647 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $48,591 and $90,381. We rank the 58 U.S. colleges whose Agricultural Business programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 4,781 graduates in all. That puts Agricultural Business at #48 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Cornell University, in New York, leads at $145,218, 120% above the median ranked school ($66,041). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $58,226 and $71,648, and the lowest earns $47,248. 26 of the 58 ranked schools (45%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 19 public, 1 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 95% are public. The top 20 are spread across 18 states, with Illinois the most common (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,329 a year, against $17,054 across all 58 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $16,669 in federal loans, about 22% of one year of earnings. Measured against a typical high-school graduate in the same state, the median top-20 school recovers its net cost in about 1.6 years.
Showing the top 50 of 58 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $145,218 | 159 | $12,500 | $28,690 | 1.0 |
| 2 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $88,396 | 114 | $16,000 | $16,665 | 1.3 |
| 3 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $86,646 | 170 | $18,721 | $14,355 | 1.1 |
| 4 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $82,831 | 58 | $17,499 | $20,268 | 1.7 |
| 5 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $81,655 | 50 | $12,500 | $17,354 | 1.6 |
| 6 | University of Idaho Moscow, ID Public · 4-year | $80,690 | 36 † | $16,837 | $14,831 | 1.3 |
| 7 | Montana State University Bozeman, MT Public · 4-year | $79,621 | 32 † | $19,125 | $22,499 | 1.9 |
| 8 | Mississippi State University Mississippi State, MS Public · 4-year | $78,998 | 34 † | $19,500 | $17,595 | 1.5 |
| 9 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $78,577 | 26 † | $15,000 | $15,678 | 1.5 |
| 10 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $77,479 | 430 | $16,500 | $21,315 | 2.0 |
| 11 | North Dakota State University-Main Campus Fargo, ND Public · 4-year | $77,296 | 90 | $17,875 | $15,543 | 1.5 |
| 12 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $75,921 | 62 | $15,000 | $13,936 | 1.3 |
| 13 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $73,471 | 108 | $26,000 | $32,875 | 3.6 |
| 14 | Oregon State University Corvallis, OR Public · 4-year | $72,311 | 42 | $16,455 | $19,604 | 2.2 |
| 15 | Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Carbondale, IL Public · 4-year | $71,910 | 47 | $15,000 | $13,297 | 1.5 |
| 16 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $70,862 | 137 | $15,000 | $6,541 | 0.7 |
| 17 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $69,689 | 77 | $15,750 | $19,070 | 2.2 |
| 18 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $69,498 | 77 | $20,290 | $16,778 | 2.1 |
| 19 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $69,108 | 74 | $21,500 | $19,680 | 2.3 |
| 20 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $68,671 | 90 | $19,500 | $17,303 | 2.0 |
| 21 | Auburn University Auburn, AL Public · 4-year | $68,658 | 45 | $20,500 | $24,323 | 2.7 |
| 22 | California State University-Fresno Fresno, CA Public · 4-year | $67,731 | 112 | $13,279 | $7,000 | 0.9 |
| 23 | Iowa State University Ames, IA Public · 4-year | $67,529 | 358 | $15,000 | $18,589 | 2.4 |
| 24 | South Dakota State University Brookings, SD Public · 4-year | $67,425 | 57 | $22,000 | $19,841 | 2.6 |
| 25 | Clemson University Clemson, SC Public · 4-year | $67,050 | 100 | $21,500 | $22,253 | 2.8 |
| 26 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $66,833 | 64 | $23,125 | $16,674 | 2.2 |
| 27 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $66,603 | 103 | $19,500 | $17,339 | 2.3 |
| 28 | Kansas State University Manhattan, KS Public · 4-year | $66,387 | 128 | $18,500 | $19,406 | 2.5 |
| 29 | University of Wisconsin-Platteville Platteville, WI Public · 4-year | $66,059 | 118 | $15,000 | $16,032 | 2.3 |
| 30 | West Virginia University Morgantown, WV Public · 4-year | $66,022 | 68 | $23,796 | $15,634 | 2.0 |
| 31 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $65,900 | 145 | $15,753 | $14,600 | 2.0 |
| 32 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $65,882 | 38 † | $18,739 | $25,097 | 3.6 |
| 33 | University of Kentucky Lexington, KY Public · 4-year | $65,847 | 57 | $19,500 | $18,851 | 2.5 |
| 34 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $65,480 | 70 | $17,404 | $18,209 | 2.2 |
| 35 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE Public · 4-year | $65,312 | 96 | $18,250 | $17,747 | 2.5 |
| 36 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $65,198 | 72 | $11,250 | $14,480 | 2.1 |
| 37 | University of Wyoming Laramie, WY Public · 4-year | $64,200 | 34 † | $14,234 | $13,599 | 2.2 |
| 38 | Alcorn State University Alcorn State, MS Public · 4-year | $62,499 | 27 † | $25,125 | $13,265 | 1.7 |
| 39 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $62,398 | 43 | $22,999 | $24,953 | 3.9 |
| 40 | Sam Houston State University Huntsville, TX Public · 4-year | $62,302 | 60 | $17,750 | $16,404 | 2.4 |
| 41 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus Stillwater, OK Public · 4-year | $60,830 | 110 | $17,375 | $17,447 | 2.7 |
| 42 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $58,983 | 62 | $20,500 | $21,279 | 4.6 |
| 43 | Fort Hays State University Hays, KS Public · 4-year | $58,520 | 46 | $15,000 | $12,569 | 2.1 |
| 44 | Arkansas State University Jonesboro, AR Public · 4-year | $58,128 | 66 | $17,500 | $12,366 | 1.9 |
| 45 | Northwest Missouri State University Maryville, MO Public · 4-year | $58,035 | 73 | $17,250 | $16,244 | 2.8 |
| 46 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $57,744 | 39 † | $11,000 | $14,936 | 3.1 |
| 47 | University of Wisconsin-River Falls River Falls, WI Public · 4-year | $57,307 | 42 | $19,500 | $14,054 | 2.8 |
| 48 | Southern Arkansas University Main Campus Magnolia, AR Public · 4-year | $55,787 | 39 † | $13,875 | $14,027 | 2.4 |
| 49 | Tarleton State University Stephenville, TX Public · 4-year | $54,993 | 189 | $19,500 | $20,783 | 4.1 |
| 50 | Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN Public · 4-year | $53,648 | 34 † | — | $13,359 | 2.8 |
How this ranking is built
A school appears here only if it meets every condition below.
- Which programs count
- Main campuses only, one entry per institution. Scorecard reports program outcomes for the whole six-digit federal ID (OPEID6), so branch campuses share their parent’s numbers and are not listed twice.
- Only bachelor's degree programs in Agricultural Business (CIP 0101, the four-digit code Scorecard uses to group related programs).
- At least 25 graduates in the earnings sample. Smaller samples are left out because their medians swing too much and the counts carry a little privacy noise.
- A major gets a page only when at least 20 schools qualify. This one has 58.
- Ranked by median earnings 4 years after completing, highest first. Ties go to the larger sample, then to the school name.
- Schools missing earnings or a sample size are left out rather than estimated.
- What the numbers mean
- Earnings: median annual earnings of graduates four years after completing. The cohort completed in academic years 2017-18 and 2018-19 and was measured in calendar years 2022 and 2023, in 2024 dollars.
- Who is counted: graduates who received federal student aid (Title IV grants or loans), and only those who were working and not enrolled in more school that year. Graduates without federal aid, those who went on to further study and those with no earnings are not in the median.
- Scorecard adds privacy noise to counts and medians and hides values it cannot protect, so a gap of a few percent between two schools is not meaningful.
- Graduates: the number of graduates in that earnings sample. A † marks fewer than 40, where the figure is less precise.
- Debt: median federal loan debt (Stafford and Grad PLUS loans disbursed at that school) of graduates who borrowed, from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 completers. Parent PLUS and private loans are not included.
- Net price: average yearly cost after grants and scholarships for the whole institution, not this major, academic year 2023-24.
- Payback: 4 years of net price divided by how much these earnings exceed a high-school graduate’s in the school’s state. Shown only when that gap is at least $2,000, the same formula as the rest of the site.
- Source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard field-of-study data, June 2026 release.
Top states for Agricultural Business earnings
Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.
| State | Median earnings | Ranked schools | Top school |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $66,465 | 4 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo |
| Wisconsin | $66,059 | 3 | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Texas | $58,648 | 6 | Texas A&M University-College Station |
| Arkansas | $58,128 | 3 | University of Arkansas |
| Missouri | $54,515 | 4 | University of Missouri-Columbia |
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