Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Agriculture (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Agriculture earn a median of $53,676 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $39,047 and $70,551. We rank the 30 U.S. colleges whose Agriculture programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,869 graduates in all. That puts Agriculture at #92 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, in California, leads at $84,412, 58% above the median ranked school ($53,272). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $49,347 and $58,311, and the lowest earns $42,503, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 14 of the 30 ranked schools (47%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 18 public, 2 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 93% are public. Texas places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Illinois (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,525 a year, against $16,020 across all 30 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,341 in federal loans, about 34% 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 3.3 years.
Showing the top 30 of 30 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $84,412 | 36 † | $21,903 | $16,665 | 1.4 |
| 2 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $71,237 | 31 † | $21,469 | $16,805 | 1.8 |
| 3 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,954 | 78 | $13,109 | $28,690 | 3.6 |
| 4 | California State University-Stanislaus Turlock, CA Public · 4-year | $64,669 | 27 † | — | $6,067 | 0.9 |
| 5 | Illinois State University Normal, IL Public · 4-year | $63,600 | 214 | $15,750 | $19,398 | 2.8 |
| 6 | South Dakota State University Brookings, SD Public · 4-year | $61,132 | 62 | $19,500 | $19,841 | 3.3 |
| 7 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $59,213 | 33 † | $17,375 | $21,315 | 3.5 |
| 8 | Western Illinois University Macomb, IL Public · 4-year | $58,333 | 160 | $17,062 | $12,937 | 2.3 |
| 9 | Texas A&M University-Kingsville Kingsville, TX Public · 4-year | $58,245 | 34 † | $22,750 | $12,090 | 2.1 |
| 10 | Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Carbondale, IL Public · 4-year | $57,596 | 47 | $15,000 | $13,297 | 2.5 |
| 11 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $57,343 | 45 | $25,000 | $19,070 | 3.4 |
| 12 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $57,207 | 53 | $24,408 | $17,799 | 3.4 |
| 13 | Warner University Lake Wales, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,429 | 25 † | $17,514 | $19,748 | 3.6 |
| 14 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $53,969 | 38 † | $19,500 | $17,303 | 3.5 |
| 15 | Oregon State University Corvallis, OR Public · 4-year | $53,547 | 104 | $23,500 | $19,604 | 4.7 |
| 16 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE Public · 4-year | $52,997 | 29 † | — | $17,747 | 4.4 |
| 17 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $52,932 | 50 | $26,000 | $32,875 | 8.0 |
| 18 | Truman State University Kirksville, MO Public · 4-year | $52,303 | 32 † | $18,518 | $12,780 | 2.9 |
| 19 | Tennessee Technological University Cookeville, TN Public · 4-year | $52,085 | 76 | $14,500 | $14,246 | 3.3 |
| 20 | East Texas A&M University Commerce, TX Public · 4-year | $51,983 | 32 † | $19,181 | $11,841 | 2.8 |
| 21 | Western Kentucky University Bowling Green, KY Public · 4-year | $51,065 | 89 | $22,500 | $10,990 | 2.8 |
| 22 | Prairie View A & M University Prairie View, TX Public · 4-year | $49,403 | 44 | $27,750 | $13,570 | 3.7 |
| 23 | Northwest Missouri State University Maryville, MO Public · 4-year | $49,328 | 38 † | $17,250 | $16,244 | 4.5 |
| 24 | The University of Tennessee-Martin Martin, TN Public · 4-year | $47,956 | 213 | $19,400 | $10,701 | 3.3 |
| 25 | North Carolina A & T State University Greensboro, NC Public · 4-year | $46,990 | 35 † | $27,438 | $10,846 | 3.4 |
| 26 | Missouri State University-Springfield Springfield, MO Public · 4-year | $46,412 | 35 † | $15,000 | $17,613 | 6.1 |
| 27 | Morehead State University Morehead, KY Public · 4-year | $45,255 | 91 | $23,819 | $9,793 | 4.0 |
| 28 | Austin Peay State University Clarksville, TN Public · 4-year | $45,020 | 38 † | $18,875 | $9,735 | 3.8 |
| 29 | McNeese State University Lake Charles, LA Public · 4-year | $43,901 | 52 | $18,000 | $12,493 | 5.2 |
| 30 | Tennessee State University Nashville, TN Public · 4-year | $42,503 | 28 † | $26,751 | $15,796 | 8.2 |
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 Agriculture (CIP 0100, 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 30.
- 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 Agriculture 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois | $58,333 | 3 | Illinois State University |
| Texas | $57,794 | 6 | Texas State University |
| Missouri | $49,328 | 3 | Truman State University |
| Tennessee | $46,488 | 4 | Tennessee Technological University |
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