Education Administrators, Postsecondary
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: New York, at $139,640. Tax does not change that. Best off: South Dakota, at $110,672 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- New York's $139,640 median for education administrators, postsecondary survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: South Dakota takes the top position at $110,672. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$104,590
People doing it
180,470
Highest paid
$139,640
NY
Best off, really
$110,672
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$64,560
Highest tenth
$215,620
Lowest, really
$56,269
HI
States with data
51
National average
$126,540
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $56,269 and $110,672. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 180,470 people hold this job nationally, earning $104,590 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $104,590 in the middle.
- Interstate variation for education administrators, postsecondary is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $56,269 to $110,672. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 180,470 are employed nationally in education administrators, postsecondary, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 51 jurisdictions report education administrators, postsecondary, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Education Administrators, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $64,560 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $104,590 |
| Top tenth earn over | $215,620 |
| This salary | $104,590 |
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 Education Administrators, Postsecondary
The national median for this job
$104,590around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $64,560 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $104,590 |
| Top tenth | $215,620 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Education Administrators, Postsecondary, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $78,240 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New York · $139,640 |
| Spread | $61,400 |
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 | $104,390 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $107,425 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $126,160 | $97,496 | $110,672 |
| WY | $127,960 | $98,727 | $108,672 |
| WI | $124,960 | $90,713 | $97,439 |
| KY | $114,310 | $85,364 | $94,358 |
| DE | $128,570 | $91,889 | $92,581 |
| NY | $139,640 | $99,148 | $92,123 |
| WA | $127,630 | $98,501 | $90,733 |
| NM | $109,480 | $81,816 | $90,518 |
| ND | $101,600 | $79,584 | $89,852 |
| OK | $105,830 | $79,020 | $89,504 |
| KS | $110,020 | $80,379 | $89,344 |
| NJ | $131,570 | $95,003 | $87,252 |
| VA | $120,840 | $87,653 | $87,002 |
| CO | $118,440 | $87,650 | $86,455 |
| TN | $100,850 | $79,778 | $86,232 |
| MA | $128,970 | $93,288 | $86,188 |
| CT | $123,190 | $89,325 | $86,147 |
| MI | $108,500 | $80,799 | $85,789 |
| LA | $98,840 | $75,785 | $85,783 |
| MO | $104,560 | $78,411 | $85,450 |
| MT | $102,980 | $76,819 | $85,124 |
| TX | $104,390 | $82,268 | $84,660 |
| GA | $110,200 | $81,456 | $84,236 |
| MD | $118,550 | $86,852 | $83,540 |
| AL | $100,030 | $75,023 | $83,387 |
| ID | $101,200 | $75,514 | $82,597 |
| IN | $98,000 | $74,912 | $81,263 |
| NC | $101,060 | $76,402 | $81,159 |
| PA | $103,740 | $78,626 | $80,642 |
| NE | $96,030 | $72,721 | $80,465 |
| VT | $104,450 | $77,527 | $80,227 |
| AK | $103,080 | $81,347 | $79,975 |
| OR | $120,110 | $83,368 | $79,610 |
| CA | $125,460 | $89,442 | $79,447 |
| UT | $100,420 | $75,007 | $78,953 |
| RI | $106,520 | $80,060 | $78,945 |
| AZ | $103,280 | $79,308 | $78,441 |
| MN | $104,740 | $76,916 | $78,153 |
| NH | $104,190 | $82,128 | $77,961 |
| IA | $89,320 | $68,884 | $77,601 |
| SC | $95,570 | $72,050 | $77,326 |
| MS | $86,590 | $66,374 | $76,037 |
| IL | $99,770 | $74,224 | $75,084 |
| OH | $87,370 | $68,608 | $74,727 |
| NV | $88,810 | $71,308 | $73,528 |
| WV | $84,660 | $65,400 | $72,851 |
| AR | $78,240 | $61,436 | $71,017 |
| DC | $107,390 | $78,219 | $70,592 |
| ME | $88,180 | $66,202 | $68,181 |
| FL | $83,840 | $67,811 | $65,549 |
| HI | $81,020 | $61,113 | $56,269 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $104,590.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is New York, at $99,148.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Hawaii, on $56,269.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for education administrators, postsecondary, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $104,590, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for education administrators, postsecondary model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $99,148, which leads in New York.
- Real-terms results for education administrators, postsecondary rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $56,269. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.