{"id":312444,"date":"2026-10-23T04:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T04:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312444\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T04:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T04:08:16","slug":"across-multiple-majors-penn-leads-nationwide-post-graduate-earnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312444\/","title":{"rendered":"Across multiple majors, Penn leads nationwide post-graduate earnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penn graduates join the workforce in stronger financial position than peers from most other universities \u2014 but not all majors are created equal.<\/p>\n

The Daily Pennsylvanian analyzed federal earnings data<\/a> alongside Penn Career Services\u2019 annual post-graduate outcomes reports<\/a> to compare starting salaries across undergraduate majors. The federal data, analyzed by the HEA Group and released last December, follows a new Department of Education rule for colleges that participate in federal student loan programs. <\/p>\n

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Penn\u2019s Computer and Information Sciences program was the fourth-highest earning program in the country with $241,380 in median earnings four years after graduation. The Wharton School’s finance concentration ranked 17th overall and first among undergraduate finance programs.<\/p>\n

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Several other majors and concentrations at the University were also industry leaders. The average earnings of a Penn philosophy major were $107,454, which led all programs nationwide. Both the College of Arts and Science\u2019s history and cognitive science majors rank top 10 in the country, and Wharton\u2019s marketing concentration came in at second.<\/p>\n

The HEA Group analyzed earnings from the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years. According to the data, just 804 out of 32,578 undergraduate-level programs \u2014 or 2.47% \u2014 are at risk<\/a> of failing the Education Department\u2019s earnings benchmark. All 24 Penn programs for which data were available cleared the bar, with median earnings four years after graduation exceeding the national benchmark of $34,808 for high school graduates.<\/p>\n

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The DP also examined earnings reported by Penn\u2019s Class of 2025, the latest class for which Career Services has published post-graduate data. The analysis included median starting salaries for 50 undergraduate programs and mean starting salaries for 45.<\/p>\n

Penn currently offers<\/a> 87 majors and concentrations across its four undergraduate schools. The DP was unable to collect median salary data for programs with two or fewer graduates and mean salary data for programs with three or fewer.<\/p>\n

\"scatter<\/p>\n

Graduates of the Networked and Social Systems Engineering program obtained the highest starting salaries of any Penn major, with a median of $195,000 and a mean of $180,833 across six reports. Computer Science ranked second in both categories, with a median starting salary of $140,000 and a mean of $157,337.<\/p>\n

In both median and mean salaries, all 15 lowest-earning majors were from the College of Arts and Sciences. Majors from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences had the four highest median salaries and three highest mean salaries.<\/p>\n

\"table<\/p>\n

In every year since 2019, the Engineering School produced graduates with the highest median and mean starting salaries. In 2025, Engineering School graduates had a median starting salary of $122,500, followed by the Wharton School at $110,000, the College at $88,000, and the School of Nursing at $85,280.<\/p>\n

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the real median personal income<\/a> in the United States is $46,960, and the mean personal income<\/a> is $70,390.<\/p>\n

The response rate<\/a> for the Class of 2025 survey was 54%, according to Career Services. The knowledge rate \u2014 which includes both survey respondents and outcomes found through other sources \u2014 was 74%, with 1,938 total outcomes known.<\/p>\n

Jack Guerin leads data reporting and can be reached at guerin@thedp.com<\/a>. At Penn, he studies philosophy, politics, and economics. Follow him on X @JackGuerin_<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn graduates join the workforce in stronger financial position than peers from most other universities \u2014 but not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-312444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}