At the University of Chicago, economics degrees equal roughly three in every ten bachelor’s degrees the university awards. Over the 2022 through 2024 academic years, Chicago awarded 1,612 economics degrees out of 5,361 bachelor’s degrees in all fields, a 30.1 percent share that no other school in our universe matches. Its alumni also earned 129 economics doctorates between 2015 and 2024, tied with UC Berkeley for the most of any institution we scored, and its economics graduates report median earnings of $127,832 four years after completing the degree.
Those numbers put Chicago first in the 2026 College Transitions ranking of undergraduate economics programs, with a composite score of 96.2. The rest of the list is less uniform. Ten of the top 25 are liberal arts colleges, none is a public university, and one of the most familiar names in the field, MIT, ranks 47th. This article presents the top 25, then works through what separates the schools that follow Chicago.
How the Ranking Scores Economics
The ranking universe is based on bachelor’s degrees awarded in the federal CIP 45.06 family, Economics. Program-level earnings draw on College Scorecard data for CIP 45.06 and for CIP 52.06, Business/Managerial Economics, a separate federal family. A program qualifies with at least 20 economics bachelor’s degrees over fiscal years 2022 through 2024, and 423 institutions meet that bar. Each receives a percentile on five components, which are weighted into a composite.
| Component | Weight | What it measures | Source and years |
| Major Emphasis | 12% | Economics degrees as a share of all bachelor’s degrees the institution awarded | IPEDS Completions, 2022 to 2024 |
| Program Scale | 13% | Number of economics bachelor’s degrees (log scale) | IPEDS Completions, 2022 to 2024 |
| Academic Rating | 30% | Nine indicators: SAT/ACT midpoint, retention, graduation rate, student-faculty ratio, share of classes under 20, professor salary, graduation rate relative to prediction, full-time faculty share, terminal-degree share | IPEDS; College Transitions Common Data Set panel |
| Earnings & ROI | 25% | Economics graduates’ median earnings four years after completion, CIP 45.06 and 52.06 (55%); institution-wide median earnings (15%); institution-level ROI at 20 years (15%) and 40 years (15%) | College Scorecard; Georgetown CEW |
| PhD Productivity | 20% | Economics research doctorates earned by the institution’s bachelor’s-degree alumni, half raw count and half rate per 1,000 undergraduates | NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2015 to 2024 |
Table 1. Ranking components, weights and data sources.
Three scoring rules affect how to read the results. The economics earnings figure is College Scorecard’s median for graduates who are working and not enrolled four years after completion, the longest horizon Scorecard currently publishes at the program level; Scorecard suppresses the figure for small cohorts and applies privacy protections to published values. Where a program is missing a value on any component other than PhD Productivity, it is assigned the universe median. And a program with no record in the NSF doctoral data scores zero on PhD Productivity. Two top-100 programs are in that position, Columbia University (ranked 73rd) and Union College (100th).
The Top 25
Chicago leads at 96.2, followed by Harvard at 95.1 and Duke at 93.6. Ranks are set on unrounded scores. Notre Dame (88.53) sits one place above Colby (88.46), Middlebury (87.22) one above Cornell (87.17), and Amherst one above Georgetown, though both display 86.7.
| Rank | Institution | State | Type | Economics degrees, 2022-24 | Score |
| 1 | University of Chicago | IL | Private university | 1,612 | 96.2 |
| 2 | Harvard University | MA | Private university | 682 | 95.1 |
| 3 | Duke University | NC | Private university | 543 | 93.6 |
| 4 | Princeton University | NJ | Private university | 378 | 93.5 |
| 5 | Northwestern University | IL | Private university | 769 | 92.7 |
| 6 | Yale University | CT | Private university | 467 | 92.4 |
| 7 | Williams College | MA | Liberal arts college | 283 | 91.8 |
| 8 | University of Pennsylvania | PA | Private university | 565 | 91.7 |
| 9 | Claremont McKenna College | CA | Liberal arts college | 292 | 91.6 |
| 10 | Dartmouth College | NH | Private university | 450 | 91.5 |
| 11 | Brown University | RI | Private university | 452 | 90.8 |
| 12 | Stanford University | CA | Private university | 321 | 90.4 |
| 13 | Swarthmore College | PA | Liberal arts college | 180 | 89.9 |
| 14 | Vanderbilt University | TN | Private university | 685 | 89.6 |
| 15 | Colgate University | NY | Liberal arts college | 340 | 89.5 |
| 16 | University of Notre Dame | IN | Private university | 446 | 88.5 |
| 17 | Colby College | ME | Liberal arts college | 252 | 88.5 |
| 18 | Middlebury College | VT | Liberal arts college | 304 | 87.2 |
| 19 | Cornell University | NY | Private university | 424 | 87.2 |
| 20 | Boston College | MA | Private university | 901 | 87.1 |
| 21 | Wellesley College | MA | Liberal arts college | 222 | 86.9 |
| 22 | Washington and Lee University | VA | Liberal arts college | 135 | 86.8 |
| 23 | Amherst College | MA | Liberal arts college | 208 | 86.7 |
| 24 | Georgetown University | DC | Private university | 446 | 86.7 |
| 25 | Pomona College | CA | Liberal arts college | 147 | 86.3 |
Table 2. Top 25 undergraduate economics programs, 2026. Economics degrees are bachelor’s degrees under CIP 45.06, fiscal years 2022 through 2024. Source: College Transitions 2026 Economics Ranking; IPEDS Completions.
Ten Liberal Arts Colleges, No Public Universities
Williams (7th), Claremont McKenna (9th), Swarthmore (13th), Colgate (15th), Colby (17th), Middlebury (18th), Wellesley (21st), Washington and Lee (22nd), Amherst (23rd) and Pomona (25th) make up ten of the top 25. The other fifteen are private research universities.
Figure 1 shows the main reason. At most of these colleges, economics accounts for a larger share of bachelor’s degrees than it does at the universities around them in the ranking.
Figure 1. Economics as a share of all bachelor’s degrees awarded, fiscal years 2022 through 2024, top 25 programs. Source: IPEDS Completions, as compiled in the College Transitions 2026 Economics Ranking.
Claremont McKenna nearly matches Chicago, at 29.3 percent (292 of 998 degrees). Williams follows at 17.9 percent, then Colby, Colgate and Middlebury at about 15 percent each. At the other end of the top 25, economics is 6.4 percent of Stanford’s bachelor’s degrees and 3.7 percent of Cornell’s.
That share drives Major Emphasis, which is 12 percent of the composite. Claremont McKenna (99.8) and Williams (99.5) rank second and third on it behind Chicago’s 100. Program Scale pulls the other way. Pomona, with 147 economics degrees over three years, scores 63.4 on it, and Washington and Lee, with 135, scores 61.1.
Early-Career Earnings Vary Widely Inside the Top 25
The Earnings & ROI component draws 55 percent of its weight from what economics graduates specifically earn. Figure 2 shows that figure for each top-25 program.
Figure 2. Median earnings of economics bachelor’s completers four years after completion, top 25 programs. Source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, as compiled in the College Transitions 2026 Economics Ranking.
Duke stands apart at $153,139, which is $25,307 above the next program, Chicago ($127,832). Amherst ($127,636), Stanford ($127,416), Penn ($125,816), Middlebury ($125,751), Yale ($125,006) and Harvard ($124,570) form a close group behind them. At the low end of the top 25, Wellesley ($91,749), Georgetown ($92,475), Boston College ($93,934) and Brown ($94,824) all report medians under $95,000.
Across the top 100 the range widens, from $64,148 at Case Western Reserve to Duke’s figure. Earnings also track academic profile closely. Among top-100 programs with a published figure, the correlation between economics earnings and Academic Rating is 0.67. The data cannot separate what a program adds from the students it enrolls, so these medians describe graduates, not the value of a department. And because they are measured four years after completion, they should not be read as estimates of graduates’ long-term earnings.
The full Earnings & ROI component, which blends the economics figure with school-wide earnings and Georgetown’s institution-level return-on-investment estimates, is led by Stanford (99.4), Penn (99.2) and Duke (98.3).
What Each Kind of School Is Scored On
Figure 3 splits the top 100 into private universities, small private colleges (private institutions with fewer than 4,000 undergraduates) and public universities, and plots every program’s percentile on each component.
Figure 3. Median component percentile by institution type, top 100 programs. Source: College Transitions 2026 Economics Ranking.
The small colleges post the highest median on Major Emphasis (92.7) and the lowest on Program Scale (70.2). Public universities reverse that pattern, with a Program Scale median of 96.0 and the lowest Academic Rating median of the three groups (67.3). Private universities lead on Earnings & ROI, with a median of 93.3 against 79.3 for small colleges and 74.8 for publics.
PhD Productivity is the one component where the three groups sit close together, with medians of 86.0, 83.0 and 82.7. Each type reaches it by a different route, which the section on the doctoral pipeline takes up.
The Public Universities Start at 26th
UC Berkeley is the highest-ranked public program, at 26th, followed by Virginia (28th) and Michigan (29th). Berkeley shows the public profile in its sharpest form. It awarded 2,084 economics degrees over three years and scores 99.8 on Program Scale, 95.2 on Earnings & ROI and 95.1 on PhD Productivity, against an Academic Rating of 67.4.
The four largest programs in the top 100 are all public. UCLA awarded 2,377 economics degrees, Berkeley 2,084, UC Santa Barbara 1,958 and Michigan 1,692, compared with Chicago’s 1,612. The University of California places seven campuses in the top 100: Berkeley, UCLA (37th), Santa Barbara (44th), San Diego (62nd), Davis (66th), Irvine (78th) and Santa Cruz (97th).
Where the Doctoral Pipeline Runs
PhD Productivity counts economics research doctorates earned from 2015 through 2024 by an institution’s bachelor’s-degree alumni, and weights the raw count and the rate per 1,000 undergraduates equally.
By count, Chicago and Berkeley lead at 129 each, followed by Harvard (99), Stanford (76), Michigan (70), MIT (62) and Yale (60). By rate, the leaders are small colleges. Swarthmore’s alumni earned economics doctorates at 22.5 per 1,000 undergraduates and Williams’ at 21.5, ahead of Chicago (17.2), Pomona (17.0) and Harvard (13.9). Macalester (11.7), Carleton (11.6) and Wellesley (11.2) follow.
Berkeley and Michigan reach their PhD scores on volume, at rates under 4 per 1,000. Swarthmore and Williams reach theirs on rate, from counts of 37 and 45. Chicago and Harvard score near the top on both halves, which is why they hold the two highest PhD Productivity scores in the ranking, 99.7 and 99.3.
Questions Counselors Ask About This Ranking
Why does MIT rank 47th?
MIT scores 98.8 on PhD Productivity, third in the ranking, and 98.2 on Earnings & ROI. It awarded 49 economics degrees over three years, which puts it at 44.4 on Major Emphasis and 33.7 on Program Scale. Those two components carry a quarter of the composite weight. A student who places little weight on the size or campus prevalence of the economics major may want to focus instead on MIT’s Academic Rating (86.9), Earnings & ROI and PhD Productivity scores.
Is a small college a sound choice for a future economics PhD?
The rate data say small colleges belong on that student’s list. Swarthmore, Williams and Pomona all post higher per-capita doctoral rates than every research university except Chicago. The figures describe past graduates and do not predict any individual student’s admission to a doctoral program.
Do the earnings figures show what a program adds?
No. They describe what a program’s working graduates earned four years out. Schools with stronger academic profiles post higher economics earnings, and the ranking has no way to separate the program’s contribution from the students it admits.
What should an in-state public applicant take from this list?
That the large public programs score well on scale and doctoral output, and that their gap to the private universities comes from two components. Across the top 100, private universities outscore public ones by 5.7 composite points on average. Academic Rating accounts for 3.6 of those points and Earnings & ROI for 3.0, while publics gain back 1.7 on Program Scale. The ranking includes no cost data, so a comparison of net price has to be made separately.
Data sources: College Transitions 2026 Undergraduate Economics Ranking, compiled March 2026. IPEDS Completions, CIP 45.06 (economics, all subcodes), bachelor’s degrees, fiscal years 2022 through 2024. U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, field-of-study median earnings four years after completion for CIP 45.06 (Economics) and CIP 52.06 (Business/Managerial Economics), bachelor’s level, and institution-level median earnings 10 years after entry. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, institution-level return on investment at 20 and 40 years, most recent release available at compilation; these figures describe each institution, not its economics program. National Science Foundation, Survey of Earned Doctorates, economics, 2015 through 2024. Academic Rating indicators from IPEDS and the College Transitions Common Data Set panel. Universe: 423 institutions awarding at least 20 economics bachelor’s degrees over 2022 through 2024. All percentiles are computed across the full universe. Institution type reflects the institution as a whole.
