How to Compare Debt Against Earnings Without Fooling Yourself
The one ratio worth computing first
Divide median graduate debt by median earnings at a stated point after entry. On this site we use ten-year earnings for institution profiles, so a college with $20,000 of graduate debt and $60,000 of ten-year median earnings scores 0.33 — thirty-three cents of debt per dollar of median annual earnings. The ratio is crude: debt is a stock owed at graduation, earnings are a flow a decade later, and interest sits between them. Its virtue is comparability. Computed identically for every college from the same release, it instantly separates colleges whose earnings were bought with borrowings out of proportion to the outcome from colleges delivering similar earnings at a fraction of the debt.
Why earnings-only comparisons mislead
Rankings and marketing that sort on earnings alone systematically favour expensive colleges in expensive cities with selective intakes — and hide the invoice. Two colleges can post identical medians while one leaves graduates owing twice as much, with identical degrees competing for the same jobs. The borrower at the high-debt college starts working life with a materially worse balance sheet, a higher required payment, and less freedom to take a lower-paid job they actually want, move cities, or survive an income gap. Earnings told you what the two colleges share; debt tells you how they differ, which is why no page on this site reports one without the other.
Monthly reality: turning a ratio into a budget
Translate debt into the payment it implies before you fall in love with a ratio. Under standard federal repayment, a balance in the mid-$20,000s has historically meant a payment in the rough region of a few hundred dollars a month over ten years, with income-driven plans changing the schedule and total interest substantially. The Department's own loan simulator, using your actual projected balance and income, is the right tool — our figures are medians for other people's cohorts, useful for comparing colleges, not for scheduling your payments. The comparison question is narrower and answerable: at the colleges on your list, how large is the typical burden relative to the typical outcome, and which college minimises the burden for the outcome you want?
Where the medians hide your case
Median debt covers graduates who borrowed. It excludes graduates who borrowed nothing — at wealthy-intake colleges that group can be large, which pulls the borrowing population, not the price, into view — and it says nothing about Parent PLUS loans, private loans outside federal reporting, or credit-card and family debts used to fill aid gaps. Your family's figure could be far from the median in either direction depending on your aid offer. Use the median to interrogate offers: if a college's typical graduate owes $18,000 but your projected borrowing is $45,000, the difference is a fact about your package, and it deserves an explanation from the aid office before enrolment, not after graduation.
A decision rule you can actually use
Shortlist on completion first. Among colleges where students reliably finish, compare debt-to-earnings for your intended field, using programme-level figures where they exist. Treat a ratio drifting toward or above roughly half a year's median earnings as a prompt for hard questions — not an automatic rejection, because interest, repayment plans and strong completion change the picture, but never a detail. And when two colleges tie on outcomes, choose the lower debt: earnings medians are cohort history that may not repeat for you, while the loan balance will be yours with certainty. Debt is the one figure in this process that is guaranteed to arrive.
Further reading: return to the Learn index, apply these definitions in the college profiles and field pages, or read the full methodology for sources, files and suppression rules.
Note on this data: Figures on this page come from the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard release retrieved in October 2026. Earnings cover students who received federal financial aid and were working and not enrolled at the measurement point; they are medians for a defined past cohort, not a promise of what any individual graduate will earn. Check the college and the Scorecard for the most current figures before you decide.