Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Security Science and Technology (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Security Science and Technology earn a median of $57,805 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $41,536 and $76,538. We rank the 27 U.S. colleges whose Security Science and Technology programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,771 graduates in all. That puts Security Science and Technology at #73 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Champlain College, in Vermont, leads at $101,401, 68% above the median ranked school ($60,416). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $55,432 and $64,722, and the lowest earns $47,847, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 14 of the 27 ranked schools (52%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 10 public, 9 private nonprofit and 1 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 13 states, with New York the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $22,268 a year, against $21,708 across all 27 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $26,170 in federal loans, about 42% 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 2.7 years.
Showing the top 27 of 27 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Champlain College Burlington, VT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $101,401 | 116 | $27,000 | $35,860 | 2.2 |
| 2 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach Daytona Beach, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,996 | 31 † | $19,500 | $41,272 | 2.6 |
| 3 | Florida State University Tallahassee, FL Public · 4-year | $93,841 | 49 | $18,750 | $11,297 | 0.8 |
| 4 | Robert Morris University Moon Township, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $90,206 | 64 | $26,948 | $23,003 | 1.7 |
| 5 | Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania Bloomsburg, PA Public · 4-year | $73,289 | 72 | $25,000 | $15,699 | 1.7 |
| 6 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,491 | 51 | $27,000 | $38,793 | 4.6 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $66,084 | 37 † | $27,000 | $32,875 | 4.4 |
| 8 | University of New Haven West Haven, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,360 | 147 | $27,000 | $34,192 | 5.3 |
| 9 | George Mason University Fairfax, VA Public · 4-year | $63,182 | 39 † | $23,251 | $17,915 | 2.7 |
| 10 | West Virginia University Morgantown, WV Public · 4-year | $62,455 | 46 | $24,121 | $15,634 | 2.2 |
| 11 | University of Maryland Global Campus Adelphi, MD Public · 4-year | $62,022 | 64 | $25,391 | $22,063 | 3.6 |
| 12 | Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA Public · 4-year | $61,026 | 60 | $24,583 | $23,433 | 3.8 |
| 13 | Farmingdale State College Farmingdale, NY Public · 4-year | $60,464 | 234 | $15,000 | $10,867 | 1.8 |
| 14 | CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice New York, NY Public · 4-year | $60,416 | 41 | $15,500 | $3,203 | 0.5 |
| 15 | Tiffin University Tiffin, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,509 | 28 † | $27,000 | $26,500 | 4.9 |
| 16 | Grand Canyon University Phoenix, AZ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,384 | 45 | $27,000 | $22,472 | 4.3 |
| 17 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $57,237 | 75 | $32,062 | $9,597 | 1.7 |
| 18 | Seattle University Seattle, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,265 | 29 † | $22,250 | $34,662 | 8.9 |
| 19 | Bay Path University Longmeadow, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,262 | 36 † | $27,000 | $14,271 | 3.8 |
| 20 | Indiana University-Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN Public · 4-year | $55,988 | 30 † | $27,000 | $11,668 | 2.4 |
| 21 | University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, OK Public · 4-year | $54,876 | 79 | $21,000 | $18,309 | 3.6 |
| 22 | Hilbert College Hamburg, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $54,589 | 68 | $27,000 | $22,723 | 4.8 |
| 23 | Florida Gulf Coast University Fort Myers, FL Public · 4-year | $52,096 | 66 | $19,099 | $12,568 | 2.8 |
| 24 | University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS Public · 4-year | $51,956 | 38 † | — | $21,708 | 4.1 |
| 25 | University of Wisconsin-Platteville Platteville, WI Public · 4-year | $50,368 | 49 | $21,005 | $16,032 | 5.0 |
| 26 | Glenville State University Glenville, WV Public · 4-year | $48,388 | 44 | $29,750 | $14,006 | 3.9 |
| 27 | Keiser University-Ft Lauderdale Fort Lauderdale, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $47,847 | 133 | $34,630 | $30,498 | 9.0 |
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 Security Science and Technology (CIP 4304, 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 27.
- 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 Security Science and Technology 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | $73,289 | 3 | Robert Morris University |
| Florida | $72,969 | 4 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach |
| New York | $60,440 | 4 | Syracuse University |
| West Virginia | $57,237 | 3 | West Virginia University |
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