Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Engineering-Related Fields (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Engineering-Related Fields earn a median of $89,619 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $71,039 and $110,158. We rank the 21 U.S. colleges whose Engineering-Related Fields programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,427 graduates in all. That puts Engineering-Related Fields at #15 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, in Arizona, leads at $102,320, 15% above the median ranked school ($88,746). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $83,405 and $92,780, and the lowest earns $66,613, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 8 of the 21 ranked schools (38%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 15 public, 5 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 76% are public. The top 20 are spread across 15 states, with Michigan the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,958 a year, against $17,490 across all 21 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $25,035 in federal loans, about 28% 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 1.5 years.
Showing the top 21 of 21 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $102,320 | 81 | $28,125 | $14,967 | 0.9 |
| 2 | Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $101,798 | 32 † | $26,975 | $41,346 | 2.6 |
| 3 | Clemson University Clemson, SC Public · 4-year | $94,449 | 68 | $22,622 | $22,253 | 1.5 |
| 4 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $94,143 | 248 | $23,375 | $19,680 | 1.3 |
| 5 | The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga Chattanooga, TN Public · 4-year | $92,900 | 38 † | $24,570 | $14,265 | 1.0 |
| 6 | Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $92,780 | 53 | $27,000 | $34,906 | 2.4 |
| 7 | Art Center College of Design Pasadena, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $92,293 | 55 | $35,636 | $48,661 | 3.5 |
| 8 | Missouri University of Science and Technology Rolla, MO Public · 4-year | $91,035 | 94 | $27,000 | $16,298 | 1.2 |
| 9 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus Bowling Green, OH Public · 4-year | $89,514 | 70 | $25,500 | $24,022 | 1.8 |
| 10 | Clarkson University Potsdam, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,793 | 110 | $27,000 | $30,305 | 2.3 |
| 11 | Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI Public · 4-year | $88,746 | 28 † | $27,000 | $15,273 | 1.1 |
| 12 | University of Wisconsin-Stout Menomonie, WI Public · 4-year | $86,490 | 45 | $27,000 | $17,490 | 1.4 |
| 13 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $86,430 | 56 | $17,500 | $14,480 | 1.2 |
| 14 | Morehead State University Morehead, KY Public · 4-year | $85,181 | 31 † | — | $9,793 | 0.8 |
| 15 | Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $84,305 | 26 † | — | $18,425 | 1.5 |
| 16 | Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN Public · 4-year | $83,405 | 59 | $19,402 | $13,359 | 1.1 |
| 17 | Utah Valley University Orem, UT Public · 4-year | $83,278 | 55 | $10,949 | $6,376 | 0.6 |
| 18 | Iowa State University Ames, IA Public · 4-year | $82,548 | 160 | $23,250 | $18,589 | 1.6 |
| 19 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $81,618 | 36 † | $23,750 | $24,953 | 2.2 |
| 20 | Eastern Michigan University Ypsilanti, MI Public · 4-year | $75,528 | 45 | $19,792 | $15,407 | 1.5 |
| 21 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $66,613 | 37 † | $13,750 | $14,936 | 2.1 |
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 Engineering-Related Fields (CIP 1515, 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 21.
- 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 Engineering-Related Fields 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michigan | $88,746 | 3 | Michigan State University |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
-
Mechanical Engineering Technology (Bachelor's)
$82,073 national median · 45 schools
-
Industrial Production Technology (Bachelor's)
$80,890 national median · 36 schools
-
Construction Engineering Technology (Bachelor's)
$93,843 national median · 33 schools
-
Electrical Engineering Technology (Bachelor's)
$84,599 national median · 25 schools
-
Engineering Technology (General) (Bachelor's)
$80,526 national median · 21 schools
-
Engineering (General) (Bachelor's)
$89,359 national median · 46 schools
-
Nursing (Bachelor's)
$88,910 national median · 736 schools
-
Applied Mathematics (Bachelor's)
$91,532 national median · 27 schools
All majors College rankings How to read Scorecard earnings data Community college vs. four-year college