Civil Engineering at Norwich University

Norwich's civil engineering program starts graduates nearly $25,000 below the national median for the field, with first-year earnings of just $44,884 compared to the typical $69,574. Even within Vermont's smaller engineering market, this program ranks in only the 25th percentile—and when the University of Vermont's civil engineers earn $61,898 right out of school, the gap is hard to ignore. The small sample size (under 30 graduates) makes these figures less reliable, but the 5th percentile national ranking suggests this isn't just statistical noise.

The one encouraging sign is earnings growth: graduates see a 35% bump to $60,611 by year four. However, that still leaves them trailing both national and state medians significantly. The debt load of $21,500 is actually below average, resulting in a manageable 0.48 debt-to-earnings ratio, which softens the blow somewhat. Still, for a military-affiliated school with a 74% acceptance rate, families might expect stronger connections to engineering employers.

If your child is set on Norwich for other reasons—the military culture, location, or specific program features—the reasonable debt won't cripple them financially. But purely from an earnings standpoint, this program appears to underdeliver compared to what civil engineering graduates typically achieve, even accounting for Vermont's smaller market.