Here are the 14 highest-paying bachelor's degrees
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- Insider examined the median earnings by field of bachelor's degree using data from the Census Bureau.
- The median earnings of those with a degree in electrical engineering was the highest.
- Finance, accounting, and nursing are non-engineering degrees that also had high median earnings.
Current college students getting ready to graduate may be thinking about the companies they ideally want to get a job at, how much they are going to owe in student loans, and how much they may earn.
People who studied electrical engineering or computer science typically earned over $100,000, according to median earnings data. The data is from recently released 2022 American Community Survey one-year estimates from the Census Bureau.
The following chart shows median earnings based on the field of the bachelor's degree for the first major reported by survey respondents. The Census Bureau's data covered 34 fields of degree, including a few noted with "other" like "other business degrees," among college graduates aged 25 to 64 with a bachelor's.
Below are the highest median earnings by field of bachelor's degree based on just those with a bachelor's.
Beyond the six-figure medians from electrical engineering and computer science, other kinds of engineering jobs also had high median earnings. However, there were also some high median values from business fields including finance and economics.
Nursing is another non-engineering degree with relatively high median earnings.
The lowest medians among the 34 degrees were from people with degrees in social work; family and consumer sciences; and elementary education. Their median earnings were all below $50,000.
The new data also showed the median earnings of those with a bachelor's or higher. Looking at these results, which include graduates that might have more advanced degrees, the median earnings for electrical engineering was $121,600. That's more than the overall median of $74,150.