Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Pharmaceutical Sciences (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences earn a median of $116,539 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $78,609 and $139,974. We rank the 23 U.S. colleges whose Pharmaceutical Sciences programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,971 graduates in all. That puts Pharmaceutical Sciences at #1 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
The University of Texas at Austin, in Texas, leads at $143,049, 17% above the median ranked school ($121,958). The gap between schools is wide: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $77,717 and $127,261, and the lowest earns $61,034, so for this major the school you graduate from matters a lot. 13 of the 23 ranked schools (57%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 10 public, 10 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 15 states, with Massachusetts the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $24,807 a year, against $24,468 across all 23 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $22,678 in federal loans, about 19% 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 23 of 23 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $143,049 | 85 | — | $19,857 | 0.7 |
| 2 | Northeastern University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $142,985 | 152 | $31,000 | $30,915 | 1.2 |
| 3 | Long Island University Brookville, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $136,840 | 63 | $24,011 | $33,062 | 1.3 |
| 4 | University of Louisiana at Monroe Monroe, LA Public · 4-year | $134,329 | 68 | — | $13,466 | 0.5 |
| 5 | University of Hawaii at Hilo Hilo, HI Public · 4-year | $131,134 | 58 | — | $11,856 | 0.5 |
| 6 | Western New England University Springfield, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $129,138 | 35 † | $19,500 | $27,290 | 1.2 |
| 7 | University of Kansas Lawrence, KS Public · 4-year | $125,384 | 128 | $15,000 | $18,059 | 0.8 |
| 8 | North Dakota State University-Main Campus Fargo, ND Public · 4-year | $125,175 | 69 | $18,481 | $15,543 | 0.7 |
| 9 | Saint Joseph's University - Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $122,633 | 227 | — | $29,689 | 1.4 |
| 10 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $122,474 | 116 | $25,000 | $25,097 | 1.2 |
| 11 | South Dakota State University Brookings, SD Public · 4-year | $122,169 | 112 | $25,000 | $19,841 | 0.9 |
| 12 | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh, PA Public · 4-year | $121,958 | 116 | $25,394 | $30,434 | 1.4 |
| 13 | Samford University Birmingham, AL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $119,888 | 186 | $11,000 | $32,622 | 1.5 |
| 14 | North Carolina Central University Durham, NC Public · 4-year | $88,454 | 27 † | $22,355 | $15,359 | 1.1 |
| 15 | Cedarville University Cedarville, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $87,777 | 43 | $18,500 | $24,468 | 1.9 |
| 16 | Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Albany, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $84,423 | 32 † | $27,000 | $29,882 | 2.5 |
| 17 | Campbell University Buies Creek, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,566 | 76 | $21,412 | $24,516 | 2.2 |
| 18 | Drake University Des Moines, IA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,867 | 43 | $23,000 | $29,127 | 3.0 |
| 19 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $73,595 | 100 | $13,065 | $14,741 | 1.6 |
| 20 | Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,947 | 91 | $27,000 | $39,545 | 5.0 |
| 21 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $65,407 | 37 † | $19,294 | $17,339 | 2.4 |
| 22 | University of Toledo Toledo, OH Public · 4-year | $63,190 | 59 | $24,900 | $17,249 | 2.5 |
| 23 | University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA Public · 4-year | $61,034 | 48 | $15,279 | $14,251 | 2.4 |
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 Pharmaceutical Sciences (CIP 5120, 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 23.
- 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 Pharmaceutical Sciences 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | $129,138 | 3 | Northeastern University |
| Ohio | $65,407 | 3 | Cedarville University |
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