Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- California pays this job the most on paper: $128,210. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts Massachusetts in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and Utah wins at $95,573. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For computer science teachers, postsecondary, California's $128,210 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote Massachusetts; regional price parity then promotes Utah, whose $95,573 real figure is the highest purchasing power available in this occupation. Nominal wage comparisons across states are therefore a poor guide to relocation, and the error compounds rather than cancels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$96,980
People doing it
35,480
Highest paid
$128,210
CA
Best off, really
$95,573
UT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$49,460
Highest tenth
$170,200
Lowest, really
$52,828
AR
States with data
48
National average
$104,420
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
95%
UT, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $52,828 up to $95,573.
- Only 35,480 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- This job is not published everywhere — 48 jurisdictions have a figure, with $96,980 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. California tops the ones that are.
- The nominal spread for computer science teachers, postsecondary approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $52,828 to $95,573, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in computer science teachers, postsecondary is 35,480. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- 48 jurisdictions carry a published median for computer science teachers, postsecondary. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $49,460 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $96,980 |
| Top tenth earn over | $170,200 |
| This salary | $96,980 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$96,980around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $49,460 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $96,980 |
| Top tenth | $170,200 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $56,180 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $128,210 |
| Spread | $72,030 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $97,480 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $100,314 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| UT | $124,460 | $90,796 | $95,573 |
| NV | $106,640 | $83,851 | $86,462 |
| MA | $128,030 | $92,693 | $85,638 |
| MI | $107,690 | $80,264 | $85,220 |
| IN | $102,660 | $78,052 | $84,670 |
| CA | $128,210 | $91,066 | $80,889 |
| TX | $97,480 | $77,407 | $79,658 |
| NE | $94,360 | $71,622 | $79,249 |
| WI | $97,730 | $73,236 | $78,666 |
| VA | $106,780 | $78,571 | $77,986 |
| AL | $92,640 | $70,113 | $77,929 |
| IA | $89,510 | $69,011 | $77,744 |
| OH | $91,230 | $71,218 | $77,569 |
| PA | $97,500 | $74,428 | $76,336 |
| GA | $98,030 | $73,501 | $76,010 |
| DE | $102,080 | $75,137 | $75,702 |
| ME | $99,730 | $73,502 | $75,699 |
| CT | $106,290 | $78,478 | $75,686 |
| MO | $90,770 | $69,358 | $75,584 |
| RI | $100,790 | $76,301 | $75,238 |
| IL | $98,750 | $73,557 | $74,409 |
| ND | $81,400 | $65,767 | $74,252 |
| VT | $94,930 | $71,458 | $73,947 |
| OR | $107,310 | $75,483 | $72,080 |
| TN | $81,600 | $66,236 | $71,594 |
| KY | $83,470 | $64,747 | $71,569 |
| MD | $98,850 | $74,039 | $71,216 |
| SD | $75,540 | $61,972 | $70,347 |
| MT | $81,560 | $62,960 | $69,767 |
| LA | $77,530 | $61,433 | $69,537 |
| NM | $79,440 | $62,148 | $68,759 |
| OK | $76,570 | $59,752 | $67,680 |
| MS | $75,520 | $59,030 | $67,623 |
| DC | $101,380 | $74,502 | $67,238 |
| WA | $90,950 | $72,813 | $67,071 |
| NY | $96,450 | $72,032 | $66,928 |
| NC | $80,080 | $62,480 | $66,370 |
| MN | $85,710 | $64,822 | $65,865 |
| AZ | $84,050 | $66,260 | $65,536 |
| SC | $78,240 | $61,000 | $65,467 |
| WV | $73,880 | $58,310 | $64,953 |
| NH | $83,630 | $67,664 | $64,231 |
| CO | $80,530 | $62,648 | $61,794 |
| FL | $76,950 | $62,964 | $60,863 |
| WY | $63,900 | $53,524 | $58,916 |
| KS | $67,400 | $52,774 | $58,660 |
| NJ | $81,500 | $63,164 | $58,011 |
| AR | $56,180 | $45,701 | $52,828 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $96,980, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- Take-home figures for this job assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Massachusetts, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $92,693.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Arkansas sits at the bottom on $52,828.
- These are distribution medians for computer science teachers, postsecondary, with a national value of $96,980. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Take-home calculations for computer science teachers, postsecondary assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $92,693, in Massachusetts. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to computer science teachers, postsecondary uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Arkansas at $52,828. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Arkansas anchors the bottom at $52,828 — and the two source series are dated independently.