This explorer uses the HEA Group’s national undergraduate earnings dataset, published January 5, 2026. It contains 32,578 reported associate and bachelor’s programs, including 539 bachelor’s political science programs.
What earnings represent
Each figure is a program’s median annual earnings four years after completion. The source pools 2017-18 and 2018-19 completers, measures earnings in calendar years 2022 and 2023, and adjusts them to 2024 dollars using CPI-U.
The cohort includes Title IV federal-aid recipients who were working and not enrolled in college four years after leaving the program. It excludes graduates outside that definition, including those still in graduate school. Cohort is the number of completers in the earnings cohort.
How to compare
Small cohorts can be less representative. Use the minimum-cohort filter to focus on larger groups. The summary’s “median of program medians” gives each reported program equal weight; it is not a national median for individual graduates.
The high-school benchmark is the benchmark assigned to that program in the source, either the same-state or national median. “Gap vs. HS” subtracts this benchmark from the program median. The benchmark basis can differ across colleges.
Coverage and provenance
This includes every record in the HEA undergraduate file. Programs with no reported earnings are absent. Majors use four-digit CIP categories, which can combine more specific programs. The HEA Group identifies its earnings data as the source for the Times guide.