Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Environmental Engineering (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering earn a median of $81,171 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $68,911 and $95,232. We rank the 29 U.S. colleges whose Environmental Engineering programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,019 graduates in all. That puts Environmental Engineering at #28 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Cornell University, in New York, leads at $103,016, 27% above the median ranked school ($80,855). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $77,891 and $84,300, and the lowest earns $70,039, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 14 of the 29 ranked schools (48%) 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, 90% are public. California places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of Colorado (3).
The top 20 schools cost less than most: a median net price of $14,982 a year, against $16,665 across all 29 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,619 in federal loans, about 25% 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 1.3 years.
Showing the top 29 of 29 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 | $103,016 | 27 † | $13,176 | $28,690 | 1.7 |
| 2 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $102,702 | 41 | $20,500 | $16,665 | 1.0 |
| 3 | San Diego State University San Diego, CA Public · 4-year | $88,417 | 42 | $16,997 | $15,364 | 1.2 |
| 4 | CUNY City College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $87,804 | 31 † | — | $3,776 | 0.3 |
| 5 | Colorado School of Mines Golden, CO Public · 4-year | $87,278 | 25 † | $23,250 | $28,690 | 2.5 |
| 6 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $85,808 | 36 † | $25,984 | $17,303 | 1.3 |
| 7 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $84,973 | 29 † | $17,587 | $13,138 | 1.0 |
| 8 | University of California-Riverside Riverside, CA Public · 4-year | $84,300 | 26 † | $18,068 | $14,304 | 1.2 |
| 9 | University of California-Merced Merced, CA Public · 4-year | $83,007 | 36 † | $20,619 | $11,983 | 1.0 |
| 10 | University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO Public · 4-year | $82,020 | 29 † | $20,836 | $25,346 | 2.5 |
| 11 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $82,005 | 26 † | $26,747 | $21,279 | 2.1 |
| 12 | Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $81,818 | 42 | $25,102 | $12,116 | 1.0 |
| 13 | Clemson University Clemson, SC Public · 4-year | $81,714 | 27 † | $20,500 | $22,253 | 1.9 |
| 14 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $81,604 | 30 † | $20,399 | $13,936 | 1.2 |
| 15 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $80,855 | 55 | $26,869 | $32,875 | 3.0 |
| 16 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $80,635 | 38 † | $21,000 | $6,541 | 0.6 |
| 17 | Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Baton Rouge, LA Public · 4-year | $80,129 | 39 † | $23,718 | $19,151 | 1.7 |
| 18 | Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ Public · 4-year | $78,955 | 26 † | $27,000 | $14,158 | 1.3 |
| 19 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $78,770 | 30 † | $16,316 | $14,600 | 1.4 |
| 20 | Florida Gulf Coast University Fort Myers, FL Public · 4-year | $78,238 | 29 † | $20,000 | $12,568 | 1.1 |
| 21 | California State Polytechnic University-Humboldt Arcata, CA Public · 4-year | $78,225 | 60 | $25,000 | $13,171 | 1.3 |
| 22 | Clarkson University Potsdam, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $77,891 | 38 † | $27,000 | $30,305 | 2.9 |
| 23 | University of New Hampshire-Main Campus Durham, NH Public · 4-year | $77,556 | 55 | $27,000 | $23,805 | 2.7 |
| 24 | University of Vermont Burlington, VT Public · 4-year | $77,348 | 29 † | $19,500 | $19,343 | 1.9 |
| 25 | Michigan Technological University Houghton, MI Public · 4-year | $76,857 | 51 | $26,000 | $14,182 | 1.3 |
| 26 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $76,631 | 31 † | $26,950 | $17,799 | 1.8 |
| 27 | University at Buffalo Buffalo, NY Public · 4-year | $75,263 | 34 † | $21,500 | $20,995 | 2.1 |
| 28 | University of Wisconsin-Platteville Platteville, WI Public · 4-year | $75,099 | 32 † | $19,500 | $16,032 | 1.7 |
| 29 | Wilkes University Wilkes-Barre, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,039 | 25 † | $27,000 | $27,743 | 3.3 |
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 Environmental Engineering (CIP 1414, 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 29.
- 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 Environmental Engineering 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 | $84,300 | 5 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo |
| New York | $82,848 | 4 | Cornell University |
| Colorado | $82,020 | 3 | Colorado School of Mines |
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