Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Economics (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Economics earn a median of $82,686 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $58,184 and $116,323. We rank the 274 U.S. colleges whose Economics programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 24,741 graduates in all. That puts Economics at #26 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Williams College, in Massachusetts, leads at $166,678, 104% above the median ranked school ($81,722). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $70,727 and $97,226, and the lowest earns $54,060. 132 of the 274 ranked schools (48%) match or beat the national median.
Private nonprofit colleges dominate the top 20: 19 private nonprofit, 1 public and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 55% are public. New York places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $23,258 a year, against $20,499 across all 274 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $13,291 in federal loans, about 9% 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 0.9 years.
Showing the top 50 of 274 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Williams College Williamstown, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $166,678 | 54 | $12,925 | $17,716 | 0.6 |
| 2 | Duke University Durham, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $161,149 | 116 | $13,187 | $29,612 | 0.9 |
| 3 | Princeton University Princeton, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $160,763 | 48 | $11,250 | $6,128 | 0.2 |
| 4 | University of Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $159,578 | 155 | $13,395 | $14,860 | 0.5 |
| 5 | Harvard University Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $155,592 | 94 | $6,617 | $19,066 | 0.7 |
| 6 | Dartmouth College Hanover, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $152,929 | 104 | $18,132 | $29,519 | 1.1 |
| 7 | Claremont McKenna College Claremont, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $146,524 | 37 † | $12,000 | $28,849 | 1.1 |
| 8 | Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $144,886 | 46 | $22,020 | $31,944 | 1.2 |
| 9 | Yale University New Haven, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $142,936 | 72 | $12,562 | $23,777 | 0.9 |
| 10 | Amherst College Amherst, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $141,730 | 32 † | $16,662 | $23,367 | 0.9 |
| 11 | Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $140,337 | 109 | $12,000 | $15,846 | 0.6 |
| 12 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $137,935 | 126 | $15,000 | $28,690 | 1.1 |
| 13 | Columbia University in the City of New York New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $137,710 | 150 | $25,000 | $21,590 | 0.8 |
| 14 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $135,050 | 197 | $12,650 | $13,481 | 0.5 |
| 15 | Hamilton College Clinton, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $130,633 | 60 | $17,500 | $28,985 | 1.2 |
| 16 | University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $129,985 | 79 | $14,621 | $28,699 | 1.2 |
| 17 | Rice University Houston, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $129,575 | 51 | $11,644 | $13,370 | 0.6 |
| 18 | Colgate University Hamilton, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $128,887 | 50 | $17,500 | $28,786 | 1.2 |
| 19 | Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD Private nonprofit · 4-year | $128,882 | 60 | $12,250 | $18,809 | 0.8 |
| 20 | Swarthmore College Swarthmore, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $128,051 | 46 | $19,500 | $23,149 | 1.0 |
| 21 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $126,006 | 216 | $15,250 | $29,167 | 1.3 |
| 22 | Brown University Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $124,508 | 75 | $13,000 | $25,184 | 1.2 |
| 23 | Tufts University Medford, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $123,809 | 99 | $17,850 | $39,998 | 1.9 |
| 24 | Middlebury College Middlebury, VT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $123,477 | 44 | $19,500 | $31,483 | 1.5 |
| 25 | Colorado College Colorado Springs, CO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $122,998 | 25 † | $18,628 | $33,375 | 1.6 |
| 26 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $122,637 | 127 | $19,000 | $26,780 | 1.2 |
| 27 | Trinity College Hartford, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $122,068 | 56 | $21,500 | $34,832 | 1.7 |
| 28 | Bowdoin College Brunswick, ME Private nonprofit · 4-year | $121,983 | 39 † | $19,500 | $14,398 | 0.7 |
| 29 | Wellesley College Wellesley, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $121,787 | 64 | $11,190 | $25,496 | 1.3 |
| 30 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $121,337 | 289 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 2.1 |
| 31 | Santa Clara University Santa Clara, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $121,307 | 70 | $19,500 | $50,062 | 2.4 |
| 32 | Fairfield University Fairfield, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $120,303 | 29 † | $23,250 | $48,095 | 2.3 |
| 33 | Georgetown University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $118,999 | 85 | $15,500 | $40,815 | 2.1 |
| 34 | Marist University Poughkeepsie, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $118,557 | 28 † | $26,000 | $41,544 | 2.0 |
| 35 | College of the Holy Cross Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $118,131 | 126 | $27,000 | $38,782 | 2.0 |
| 36 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $116,510 | 225 | $19,767 | $37,050 | 1.8 |
| 37 | Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $115,837 | 34 † | $23,399 | $23,781 | 1.2 |
| 38 | Lafayette College Easton, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,864 | 68 | $19,500 | $34,433 | 1.8 |
| 39 | Haverford College Haverford, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,050 | 38 † | — | $25,314 | 1.3 |
| 40 | Barnard College New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,909 | 51 | $16,250 | $28,800 | 1.5 |
| 41 | Hobart William Smith Colleges Geneva, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,833 | 74 | $26,967 | $31,563 | 1.7 |
| 42 | Emory University Atlanta, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,631 | 76 | $20,826 | $22,585 | 1.2 |
| 43 | Bates College Lewiston, ME Private nonprofit · 4-year | $110,880 | 32 † | $13,000 | $29,351 | 1.6 |
| 44 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $110,773 | 125 | $18,423 | $21,565 | 1.2 |
| 45 | Grinnell College Grinnell, IA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $110,724 | 27 † | $16,500 | $17,648 | 1.0 |
| 46 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $110,552 | 391 | $18,750 | $13,138 | 0.7 |
| 47 | University of Rochester Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $109,324 | 62 | $19,946 | $29,278 | 1.6 |
| 48 | Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $108,422 | 91 | $25,888 | $40,766 | 2.3 |
| 49 | Connecticut College New London, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $107,283 | 48 | $23,125 | $36,175 | 2.1 |
| 50 | William & Mary Williamsburg, VA Public · 4-year | $105,467 | 88 | $19,500 | $19,096 | 1.1 |
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 Economics (CIP 4506, 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 274.
- 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 Economics 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connecticut | $107,283 | 7 | Yale University |
| Maine | $107,186 | 4 | Bowdoin College |
| Massachusetts | $96,298 | 18 | Williams College |
| Rhode Island | $95,590 | 3 | Brown University |
| District of Columbia | $92,211 | 4 | Georgetown University |
| Pennsylvania | $92,123 | 20 | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Indiana | $91,067 | 6 | University of Notre Dame |
| Tennessee | $87,762 | 3 | Vanderbilt University |
| Virginia | $87,548 | 11 | Washington and Lee University |
| New Hampshire | $86,764 | 3 | Dartmouth College |
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