Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Nutrition Science (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Nutrition Science earn a median of $60,053 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $43,153 and $76,798. We rank the 41 U.S. colleges whose Nutrition Science programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,404 graduates in all. That puts Nutrition Science at #63 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
University of California-Berkeley, in California, leads at $79,391, 33% above the median ranked school ($59,528). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $55,765 and $63,077, and the lowest earns $45,979, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 20 of the 41 ranked schools (49%) 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, 90% are public. California places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Texas (2).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $19,375 a year, against $17,354 across all 41 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,750 in federal loans, about 33% 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 3.0 years.
Showing the top 41 of 41 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $79,391 | 38 † | $14,177 | $13,481 | 1.3 |
| 2 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $75,508 | 69 | $20,405 | $17,303 | 1.7 |
| 3 | California State University-Fresno Fresno, CA Public · 4-year | $73,522 | 36 † | $11,000 | $7,000 | 0.8 |
| 4 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $70,867 | 26 † | $21,205 | $13,936 | 1.5 |
| 5 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,508 | 25 † | $21,250 | $37,050 | 4.3 |
| 6 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $68,930 | 71 | $17,166 | $16,665 | 2.1 |
| 7 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $66,437 | 50 | $23,170 | $19,680 | 2.5 |
| 8 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $64,519 | 158 | $14,166 | $14,741 | 2.1 |
| 9 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $64,441 | 71 | $23,124 | $24,406 | 3.6 |
| 10 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $63,292 | 61 | $26,603 | $25,097 | 3.9 |
| 11 | University of New Hampshire-Main Campus Durham, NH Public · 4-year | $63,077 | 107 | $27,000 | $23,805 | 4.5 |
| 12 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA Public · 4-year | $63,019 | 57 | $20,500 | $22,383 | 4.1 |
| 13 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $63,010 | 97 | $25,000 | $32,875 | 5.0 |
| 14 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $62,289 | 88 | $19,250 | $21,315 | 3.1 |
| 15 | Kansas State University Manhattan, KS Public · 4-year | $62,128 | 45 | $21,000 | $19,406 | 2.8 |
| 16 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $62,087 | 54 | $21,500 | $19,070 | 2.8 |
| 17 | San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year | $61,895 | 46 | $16,461 | $12,278 | 2.0 |
| 18 | College of Saint Benedict Saint Joseph, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,790 | 42 | $26,250 | $26,640 | 4.4 |
| 19 | University of Vermont Burlington, VT Public · 4-year | $61,238 | 43 | $19,500 | $19,343 | 3.2 |
| 20 | Metropolitan State University of Denver Denver, CO Public · 4-year | $60,395 | 98 | $19,800 | $15,327 | 3.1 |
| 21 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $59,528 | 48 | $22,000 | $21,279 | 4.5 |
| 22 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $59,329 | 57 | $20,500 | $17,354 | 3.2 |
| 23 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $59,079 | 107 | $23,000 | $16,674 | 3.0 |
| 24 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $59,054 | 100 | $20,000 | $16,778 | 3.2 |
| 25 | The University of Tennessee-Knoxville Knoxville, TN Public · 4-year | $58,972 | 36 † | $24,914 | $18,976 | 3.1 |
| 26 | University of Nevada-Las Vegas Las Vegas, NV Public · 4-year | $58,160 | 48 | $16,442 | $10,359 | 2.0 |
| 27 | Dominican University River Forest, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,532 | 25 † | — | $11,745 | 2.2 |
| 28 | University of Nevada-Reno Reno, NV Public · 4-year | $57,193 | 39 † | $19,800 | $15,927 | 3.2 |
| 29 | Central Washington University Ellensburg, WA Public · 4-year | $56,735 | 43 | $20,306 | $18,476 | 4.6 |
| 30 | Auburn University Auburn, AL Public · 4-year | $56,579 | 33 † | $25,000 | $24,323 | 4.0 |
| 31 | La Salle University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $55,765 | 33 † | $26,875 | $19,409 | 4.0 |
| 32 | Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Carbondale, IL Public · 4-year | $55,329 | 36 † | $20,500 | $13,297 | 2.8 |
| 33 | Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Baton Rouge, LA Public · 4-year | $55,159 | 47 | $24,250 | $19,151 | 3.7 |
| 34 | San Diego State University San Diego, CA Public · 4-year | $55,115 | 54 | $17,849 | $15,364 | 3.4 |
| 35 | California State Polytechnic University-Pomona Pomona, CA Public · 4-year | $54,605 | 105 | $16,500 | $11,531 | 2.6 |
| 36 | Iowa State University Ames, IA Public · 4-year | $53,933 | 28 † | $14,718 | $18,589 | 4.4 |
| 37 | Texas Woman's University Denton, TX Public · 4-year | $53,775 | 98 | $21,500 | $11,963 | 2.5 |
| 38 | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI Public · 4-year | $53,006 | 40 | $28,500 | $15,014 | 3.9 |
| 39 | California State University-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $52,797 | 56 | $13,979 | $3,967 | 1.0 |
| 40 | University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, NC Public · 4-year | $51,802 | 63 | $25,500 | $10,965 | 2.5 |
| 41 | University of Northern Colorado Greeley, CO Public · 4-year | $45,979 | 26 † | $19,875 | $17,760 | 13.4 |
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 Nutrition Science (CIP 3019, 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 41.
- 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 Nutrition Science 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 | $63,207 | 8 | University of California-Berkeley |
| Texas | $62,087 | 3 | Texas A&M University-College Station |
| Colorado | $59,528 | 3 | Metropolitan State University of Denver |
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