A new online tool, created by the HEA group, shows the state-by-state payoff from different college credentials. It’s expressed as an earnings premium — the difference between what college graduates typically make compared to the young adults in the same state who have only a high-school degree.

The Payoff of College Credentials, authored by HEA founder and president Michael Itzkowitz, provides two different way of displaying how a state’s graduates fare economically in the workforce after earning a college credential. It also allows users to see how much graduates in various fields of study earn and how that compares with other states throughout the rest of the country.

The Payoff Map is another resource that covers every field and credential in every state. You can sort the data to see how each program compares with the same program elsewhere.

The data cover 2,990,450 graduates who received some form of financial aid (Pell grant or federal loan) while enrolled in 38,149 individual college programs. More than 300 fields of study are included. The earnings of individuals with a college credential are based on Department of Education Scorecard data for students completing an undergraduate certificate, associate’s degree, or bachelor’s degree in 2017–18 and 2018–19. Earnings were measured four years later and adjusted to 2024 dollars.

The high school benchmark is each state’s median earnings for high school graduates aged 25–34. Using an estimate from the 2023 American Community Survey (also adjusted for inflation to 2024 dollars), it measures what working 25- to 34-year-olds who finished high school but did not go to college earn in each state. That number ranges from $30,408 in Mississippi to $41,356 in Alaska, with a national average of $34,808.

The earnings premium associated with a college credential is expressed as the percentage gain it conveys over the average high school graduate in each state, allowing a uniform yardstick for comparing states. For example, in a state where high school graduates earn a median $30,000, a $55,000 salary represents more of an increase (83%) than it does in a state where high school graduates typically earn $42,000 (31%). These data pertain only to graduates, which means students who enrolled in college but never earned a credential are not included.