The last five years
13,354 computing doctorates from the 2021–2025 cohorts, one year out: what each subject got hired to do, and what it paid.
The other five parts of this project describe twenty-five years. This one answers the question a student actually asks: if I work on this, what do people who worked on it get hired to do, and what does it pay? Last five graduating cohorts, measured one year after the degree.
13,354 doctorates who filed between 2021 and 2025 and were matched to a career profile. Everything below is that group at the one-year mark.
Pay in the table is the career panel’s estimate for the position, so compare the columns against each other rather than against an offer letter. The last column counts graduates who never appear in any position at all during their first three years.
| Dissertation subject | Doctorates | Into industry | Into academia | Median estimated pay, industry | Middle half | Never seen working |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Machine learning | 2644 | 51% | 21% | $189,882 | $150,857–$219,370 | 10% |
| Computer vision | 1532 | 55% | 19% | $182,598 | $140,511–$214,853 | 9% |
| Robotics | 1079 | 46% | 24% | $165,362 | $132,784–$200,672 | 11% |
| Architecture & hardware | 969 | 61% | 16% | $178,375 | $150,957–$209,333 | 10% |
| Theory | 952 | 44% | 26% | $182,786 | $143,734–$209,639 | 15% |
| Security & privacy | 879 | 48% | 27% | $182,577 | $146,381–$212,374 | 12% |
| Computational biology | 860 | 47% | 25% | $158,975 | $121,177–$199,009 | 9% |
| HCI | 736 | 34% | 38% | $153,739 | $115,653–$197,014 | 17% |
| NLP | 717 | 54% | 20% | $193,787 | $156,718–$220,369 | 14% |
| Networks | 654 | 50% | 24% | $172,737 | $146,472–$205,689 | 12% |
| Languages & SE | 498 | 54% | 21% | $187,108 | $154,923–$213,368 | 13% |
| Scientific computing | 492 | 39% | 24% | $166,123 | $128,056–$201,952 | 12% |
| Systems & distributed | 471 | 58% | 17% | $190,690 | $162,802–$216,403 | 12% |
| IR & data mining | 407 | 53% | 20% | $182,412 | $150,599–$213,382 | 11% |
| Graphics & visualisation | 272 | 52% | 16% | $179,123 | $138,810–$211,890 | 13% |
| Databases | 108 | 58% | 12% | $196,929 | $178,525–$209,038 | — |
Almost everyone lands in a job called research. That word hides the whole story.
Research is the modal outcome by a wide margin, and on its own the label is close to useless. Split it by employer and it is two different careers: 3,367 people in industrial research at a median of $184,342, and 1,855 in university research at $68,351. The second is a postdoctoral position, a training stage that happens to be recorded as a job. Any figure that averages the two describes nobody, which is why the table above reports industry pay separately rather than pay overall.
How many are never seen working at all
Every graduate below has a career profile. The question is whether any job was ever recorded on it. Following the 2021–2023 cohorts for three years splits them three ways: in a position at year one, missing at year one but appearing by year three, and never recorded at all.
The never-recorded share runs from 8.9% to 16.6% depending on subject, and it is not a reporting lag. The share who were missing at year one and surfaced by year three is never more than 2.4%, so the people missing at year one are with few exceptions still missing three years later. HCI and theory sit at the top of this range, computer vision and computational biology at the bottom.
Where the degree came from
Institutions are compared on the 2018–2022 cohorts, a window every school in the table covers in full.
Illinois places 58% of its computing doctorates into industry against 54% nationally, at an industry median of $188,326 against $177,373, which puts it 14th of the 59 institutions here. Compared like for like, the 20 institutions with at least 150 doctorates against the 15 subjects with at least 100, pay spreads about 25% across institutions and 26% across subjects. On pay, where you studied and what you studied matter about equally. On destination they part company: the share going into academia varies noticeably more across subjects than across institutions, and that gap widens as you demand larger groups.
| Degree-granting institution | Doctorates | Found working | Into industry | Into academia | Median estimated pay, industry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stanford University | 336 | 85% | 55% | 17% | $200,832 |
| The University of Chicago | 60 | — | 42% | 27% | $200,643 |
| Princeton University | 127 | 87% | 53% | 28% | $198,519 |
| Columbia University | 106 | 84% | 58% | 20% | $194,073 |
| University of Maryland, College Park | 204 | 92% | 61% | 20% | $193,009 |
| Cornell University | 175 | 83% | 56% | 19% | $192,968 |
| University of California, Berkeley | 316 | 91% | 57% | 25% | $191,119 |
| University of California, Los Angeles | 169 | 86% | 59% | 20% | $190,851 |
| University of California, San Diego | 174 | 88% | 59% | 17% | $190,590 |
| Duke University | 128 | 90% | 66% | 19% | $190,486 |
| The University of Wisconsin - Madison | 129 | 89% | 57% | 26% | $190,218 |
| The University of Utah | 83 | — | 54% | 20% | $190,026 |
| University of California, Santa Barbara | 122 | 90% | 60% | 24% | $188,704 |
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 179 | 88% | 58% | 20% | $188,326 |
| Harvard University | 76 | — | 49% | 32% | $186,886 |
| University of Michigan | 220 | 88% | 54% | 21% | $186,840 |
| The University of Texas at Austin | 189 | 90% | 72% | 11% | $186,336 |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 179 | 86% | 57% | 17% | $186,053 |
| Northwestern University | 119 | 86% | 58% | 19% | $184,491 |
| The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 86 | — | 64% | 19% | $184,276 |
Pay is the narrow axis and destination is the wide one. Across sixteen subjects, industry pay for recent doctorates runs from $153,739 to $193,787, a spread of 26%. Over the same sixteen subjects the share going into academia runs from 12% to 38%, a spread of more than three to one. What a graduate worked on barely moves the paycheque and largely decides the career.