US majors and universities where graduates earn over 200,000 USD annually

Mathematics graduates from Duke University achieve a median income of nearly 300,000 USD four years after graduation, leading the list of high-earning programs in the United States.

This year, HEA Group, a US higher education research and policy organization, released these figures. The data is based on the median income of alumni who graduated in 2018 and 2019 from approximately 32,600 academic programs.

The 10 programs with the highest incomes four years post-graduation are all within STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Among these, mathematics graduates from Duke University topped the list, earning 297,000 USD per year.

However, The New York Times noted that this figure may not represent the entire cohort, as the data only includes graduates who received government aid. For Duke's mathematics program, this accounted for 17 students.

Computer science and electrical, electronics, and communications engineering graduates from Carnegie Mellon University secured the second and third positions, respectively. Carnegie Mellon appeared three times in the top 30, more than any other institution.

Over half of the programs in the top 10 are related to computer science. Additionally, with the exceptions of University of California - Los Angeles (a public university) and Pomona College (a liberal arts institution), most other top spots belong to private, research-focused universities.

Overall, graduates from these top 10 pairs of majors and universities earn four to five times more than the national average income of 64,500 USD per year.

The specific breakdown is as follows:

No.	University	Major	Income four years after graduation (USD/year)
	All universities	All majors	64,500
1	Duke University	Mathematics	297,000
2	Carnegie Mellon University	Computer science	268,100
3	Carnegie Mellon University	Electrical, electronics and communications engineering	250,200
4	University of Pennsylvania	Computer and information sciences (general)	241,400
5	Harvard University	Statistics	230,900
6	University of California-Los Angeles	Computer engineering	228,700
7	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Computer science	225,100
8	Cornell University	Computer science	223,300
9	Princeton University	Computer science	218,000
10	Pomona College	Computer science	217,100

The New York Times highlighted that one reason for the success of Duke's mathematics students is their diverse interests, extending beyond numbers and formulas, as shared by faculty and students.

"I don't know a single math major who only studies math," said Faisal Alsaadi, a 2019 graduate who double-majored in mathematics and economics and previously worked at startups in Saudi Arabia.

Professor Ezra Miller also reported that three dual-major mathematics students at Duke recently won an international competition by developing models to maximize a soccer team's performance, according to The New York Post.