Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology earn a median of $48,842 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $36,007 and $64,274. We rank the 30 U.S. colleges whose Ecology and Evolutionary Biology programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,845 graduates in all. That puts Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at #112 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
University of Maryland-College Park, in Maryland, leads at $65,639, 30% above the median ranked school ($50,400). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $46,987 and $53,496, and the lowest earns $39,143, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 19 of the 30 ranked schools (63%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 17 public, 3 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 80% are public. California places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Colorado (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,669 a year, against $18,868 across all 30 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,500 in federal loans, about 37% 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 4.6 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 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $65,639 | 59 | $19,500 | $15,678 | 2.2 |
| 2 | California State Polytechnic University-Pomona Pomona, CA Public · 4-year | $63,525 | 26 † | $12,744 | $11,531 | 1.7 |
| 3 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,078 | 36 † | $10,419 | $15,564 | 2.8 |
| 4 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $55,159 | 29 † | $25,000 | $19,680 | 3.9 |
| 5 | University of South Carolina-Columbia Columbia, SC Public · 4-year | $55,093 | 43 | $18,965 | $22,811 | 4.5 |
| 6 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $54,370 | 67 | $19,500 | $21,279 | 6.2 |
| 7 | Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY Public · 4-year | $53,747 | 52 | $20,038 | $18,784 | 4.2 |
| 8 | California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA Public · 4-year | $53,518 | 30 † | $17,387 | $6,555 | 1.6 |
| 9 | University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO Public · 4-year | $53,429 | 89 | $21,256 | $25,346 | 7.9 |
| 10 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus Stillwater, OK Public · 4-year | $53,126 | 57 | $21,410 | $17,447 | 3.8 |
| 11 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $52,766 | 33 † | $26,012 | $25,097 | 6.7 |
| 12 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $52,701 | 87 | $18,367 | $12,470 | 3.2 |
| 13 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $52,390 | 36 † | $15,242 | $13,138 | 3.0 |
| 14 | Roger Williams University Bristol, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,857 | 29 † | $27,000 | $37,999 | 13.3 |
| 15 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $50,694 | 47 | $12,750 | $16,109 | 4.7 |
| 16 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $50,106 | 25 † | $22,287 | $16,778 | 5.5 |
| 17 | SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Syracuse, NY Public · 4-year | $50,010 | 121 | — | $18,952 | 5.3 |
| 18 | University of California-Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA Public · 4-year | $49,821 | 131 | $17,589 | $17,890 | 5.6 |
| 19 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $49,602 | 49 | $19,500 | $17,354 | 5.8 |
| 20 | Eckerd College Saint Petersburg, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,631 | 52 | $27,000 | $38,071 | 10.7 |
| 21 | University of New England Biddeford, ME Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,592 | 25 † | $27,000 | $38,107 | 14.4 |
| 22 | University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI Public · 4-year | $48,446 | 43 | $20,500 | $21,440 | 10.7 |
| 23 | University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI Public · 4-year | $46,500 | 35 † | $24,577 | $15,664 | 6.6 |
| 24 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $46,453 | 113 | $21,624 | $21,315 | 7.3 |
| 25 | Coastal Carolina University Conway, SC Public · 4-year | $45,323 | 171 | $23,973 | $13,966 | 5.3 |
| 26 | University of New Haven West Haven, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,115 | 34 † | $27,000 | $34,192 | 18.5 |
| 27 | Stockton University Galloway, NJ Public · 4-year | $44,981 | 48 | $22,875 | $20,670 | 10.3 |
| 28 | The University of Tampa Tampa, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $43,683 | 47 | $26,449 | $36,211 | 15.5 |
| 29 | University of North Carolina Wilmington Wilmington, NC Public · 4-year | $39,812 | 80 | $19,500 | $20,109 | 14.0 |
| 30 | Iowa State University Ames, IA Public · 4-year | $39,143 | 151 | $21,500 | $18,589 | 36.9 |
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 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (CIP 2613, 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 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 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 | $52,701 | 5 | California State Polytechnic University-Pomona |
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