CUNY Bernard M Baruch College
New York, NY · Selective $75,971 median earnings, 10y out
- Net price / yr
- $3,033
- Median debt
- $11,512
- Grad rate
- 72%
kvlak limn
What This College
U.S. Department of Education · College Scorecard Form CS·1 · July 8, 2026
Statement of Estimated Cost & Return
What This College
Actually Costs You
A college's sticker price is a work of fiction, and its brochure never prints the number that matters: what a typical student actually pays after aid, how much debt they carry off the stage, and whether the paycheck a decade later ever clears it. The federal College Scorecard tracks all three. This is a reading of where the arithmetic works, where it doesn't, and the quiet schools that beat their reputations.
Every figure is pulled straight from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard bulk file. What the earnings figure does and doesn't measure is worth reading first - see Methodology.
The Value Map
Debt Carried vs. Earnings Ten Years OutEvery school is a point: how much federal debt the median borrower leaves with, read left to right, against what the typical student earns about ten years after they first enrolled, read bottom to top. Up and to the left is the sweet spot - a big paycheck for little borrowed. The oxblood line is what a typical high-school graduate earns; a four-year degree that lands below it did not, on the median, buy its way past skipping college. Every school here clears that line. Many programs elsewhere in the system do not - that story is further down.
Every school, in numbers
| Institution | Debt | Earn 10y | Net price | Grad |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | $14,768 | $143,372 | $20,111 | 96% |
| Harvey Mudd College | $25,000 | $138,687 | $35,924 | 92% |
| Stanford University | $12,000 | $124,080 | $13,807 | 92% |
| University of Pennsylvania | $15,715 | $111,371 | $28,699 | 97% |
| Princeton University | $10,320 | $110,066 | $6,128 | 98% |
| Georgetown University | $15,500 | $103,494 | $40,815 | 95% |
| Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus | $21,672 | $102,772 | $12,116 | 94% |
| University of California-Berkeley | $13,000 | $92,446 | $13,481 | 93% |
| California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo | $18,500 | $90,768 | $16,665 | 86% |
| University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | $19,500 | $83,648 | $13,138 | 93% |
| New York University | $20,500 | $82,509 | $37,050 | 88% |
| University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | $19,500 | $81,054 | $14,355 | 85% |
| CUNY Bernard M Baruch College | $11,512 | $75,971 | $3,033 | 72% |
| The University of Texas at Austin | $20,500 | $75,121 | $19,857 | 89% |
| Stony Brook University | $18,228 | $74,502 | $18,784 | 76% |
| University of Florida | $15,000 | $71,588 | $6,541 | 91% |
| Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus | $25,000 | $63,435 | $32,875 | 86% |
| Arizona State University Campus Immersion | $19,500 | $62,668 | $14,967 | 68% |
| Ohio State University-Main Campus | $19,976 | $60,409 | $17,339 | 88% |
| California State University-Los Angeles | $13,000 | $59,211 | $3,967 | 53% |
The Real Price Isn't the Sticker
II. Net Price by Family IncomeColleges advertise a sticker price and then quietly charge most families something else. The bar runs from what a low-income family actually pays (income under $30,000, the filled dot) to what a high-income family pays (over $110,000, the open ring); the faint stub reaches out to the published sticker - the number almost nobody pays. At the wealthiest schools the sticker is nearly all fiction: a low-income student pays essentially nothing at Princeton, Stanford or MIT - their grant aid meets or beats the entire cost - while a high-income family at the same school pays tens of thousands. At others, the floor barely moves.
Stanford University Stanford, CA
$0 → $53,882 sticker $87,833
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA
$0 → $48,479 sticker $82,730
Princeton University Princeton, NJ
$41 → $36,094 sticker $84,040
CUNY Bernard M Baruch College New York, NY
$607 → $12,314 sticker $14,170
Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH
$4,885 → $27,359 sticker $30,305
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus Atlanta, GA
$7,666 → $17,396 sticker $28,167
New York University New York, NY
$16,977 → $66,876 sticker $84,374
low-income net · high-income net · published sticker
Where Debt Outruns Earnings
III. The Programs the Math FailsEvery four-year school on the Value Map clears the high-school-earnings line. Plenty of programs elsewhere in the system do not: their typical student, ten years on, earns less than someone who never enrolled - and still carries the loans. The failure is not spread evenly. It concentrates by sector. This is the shape of it: across every institution the Scorecard reports earnings for, the share of each sector whose typical student, ten years on, earns below the $32,000 baseline.
Private for-profit 59%
Certificate mills and career-college chains. Heavily over-represented among institutions whose typical student earns less than a high-school graduate.
Private nonprofit 8%
Wide spread: elite research universities at one end, small tuition-dependent colleges at the other.
Public 7%
State universities and community colleges. Low tuition keeps the downside shallow even when earnings are modest.
bar length = share of the sector's institutions below the baseline · axis 0 to 65%
The lesson for a family isn't "avoid a whole sector" - it's that the Scorecard lets you check the specific program before you sign. A for-profit nursing program can be a fine bet; the chain selling a general certificate next door may not be. Look up the exact school and field on collegescorecard.ed.gov and read its earnings line before the debt is real.
Methodology
V. What's Real, and How It's MeasuredEvery dollar figure on this page is pulled straight from the real College Scorecard institution file - net price, debt, earnings, graduation rate, cell by cell. The featured cast is a curated selection of 20 recognizable institutions read closely; the sector shares under Where Debt Outruns Earnings are computed over all 5,127 institutions the Scorecard reports earnings for. What deserves care isn't whether the numbers are real - they are - but what the earnings figure actually counts. Read the next paragraph before you trust it.
Source
The dataset is the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard, published as a bulk institution- and program-level CSV (hundreds of fields each, refreshed roughly annually). This page reads the Most Recent Cohorts institution-level file: src/lib/source.ts maps the Scorecard column names (MD_EARN_WNE_P10, GRAD_DEBT_MDN, NPT4*, COSTT4_A) onto the fields these charts read, and npm run data pulls the featured roster's rows by their federal UNITID. Refreshing to a newer vintage is a re-download and re-run - components unchanged.
What "earnings" actually measures (read this one)
The Scorecard's headline earnings figure is easy to misread. It is the median earnings of students who received federal financial aid (Title IV grants or loans), measured about ten years after they first enrolled - not ten years after they graduated. Crucially, it includes students who never finished. So it is closer to "what the typical aided student who walked in the door is earning a decade later" than "what a graduate earns." That makes it a fairer measure of a school's real bet - dropouts and their debt are part of the story - but it is not a starting-salary-for-grads number, and it says nothing about the student who paid cash and took no aid.
The high-school-grad baseline
The oxblood line is set at $32,000, standing in for the median earnings of a 25-to-34-year-old whose highest credential is a high-school diploma. That real figure moves with the year and the source (roughly the $30,000-$40,000 range), so the $32,000 line is the one deliberately rounded constant on the page - a chosen baseline, not a Scorecard cell. The Scorecard itself frames outcomes against exactly this comparison - a degree that leaves the median student earning below it did not, on the median, out-earn skipping college.
Net price, sticker, and debt
Sticker is the published annual cost of attendance. Net price is what remains after grant and scholarship aid - the average a family actually pays - and the by-income figures split that by the family income bands the Scorecard reports (under $30,000 through $110,000-plus). Median debt is the median federal loan balance at graduation; it excludes private loans, excludes what parents borrow through PLUS, and only counts students who took federal loans. Real debt burdens can therefore run higher than the figure shown.
The value metrics are editorial
"Premium over baseline," the "premium ÷ debt" multiple, and "return per dollar of net price" are constructions of this site, not official Scorecard fields. They are honest arithmetic on the underlying numbers, chosen to answer a family's real question - does the paycheck justify the price - but a different reasonable analyst would weight cost, debt, and completion differently. The sector shares in Where Debt Outruns Earnings are now computed directly - the share of each sector's institutions whose typical student earns below the baseline, over every institution the Scorecard reports earnings for. They are institution-level: a single school's median hides enormous variation by major, and the true program-level shares live in the Scorecard's separate field-of-study file, the natural next drop-in.
What you're not seeing
Selection, mostly. A school's earnings reflect who chose to enroll as much as what the school did with them - a highly selective university starts with students who would have done well anywhere. The institution-level view also hides enormous variation by major: engineering and nursing outcomes sit far above the campus median, and the Scorecard's field-of-study file is where a real decision should end up. Graduate earnings, students without federal aid, and anyone still outside the workforce ten years on are all outside the frame.
Generated 2026-07-08 12:30 UTC
Source: U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard (Institution-Level)