Interactive tool

Will this degree pay for itself?

Pick a major and a credential. We combine Census tax-record earnings, College Scorecard net price and debt, and a BLS no-degree baseline to estimate when the degree breaks even — and what happens if your earnings land in the bottom quarter instead of the middle.

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Assumptions and sources

Earnings curve. Census PSEO percentiles (p25/median) at 1, 5, and 10 years after graduation for the chosen major, scaled to the credential's Scorecard year-1 median. Between data points we interpolate; beyond year 10 we hold earnings flat — a conservative choice.
Costs. College Scorecard net price (what students actually pay after aid, not sticker price) times the assumed full-time completion length: 2 years for an associate's, 4 for a bachelor's. Taking longer raises the true cost.
The baseline. The no-degree path defaults to $48,360/year — the BLS Current Population Survey 2024 median for full-time workers 25+ with a high school diploma and no college — held flat. Real baseline wages grow with experience, so late-horizon gains are modestly overstated; early break-even years are barely affected. Edit it to match your situation.
Foregone earnings. On by default: years spent studying full-time are years not earning the baseline wage. This is the honest ROI convention (Georgetown CEW's NPV rankings do the same). Turn it off if you'd study while working full-time.
Debt and loan interest. Median debt is shown for context (net price already reflects what you pay); major mode uses field-level Scorecard median Stafford+Grad PLUS debt for the credential, college mode uses that school's institution-level median. Turning on "financed with student loans" adds the total interest on a standard 10-year repayment — default rate 6.39%, the federal direct undergraduate rate for 2025–26 loans — to the cost.
Completion risk. Set a graduation rate (a picked college defaults to its IPEDS 6-year rate) and we show the expected 10-year net gain: the median outcome weighted by the odds of finishing, where a non-completer leaves halfway, pays half the cost, and earns the baseline wage. That last assumption is conservative — "some college, no degree" earns only slightly above the baseline — and it's why a low graduation rate is part of the price.
Not modeled. Taxes, regional wage differences, part-time study, and graduate school.

For the full per-major verdicts with completions, demand, and licensing context, see Is It Worth It? — or compare 2-year vs 4-year paths side by side on Compare Paths. Source detail lives on data sources.