What the classification means
The program is not sending a distress signal. Completions are holding or growing, or occupational demand is strong enough to absorb a decline.
The rule behind it is fixed and published: a program is declining only when completions have fallen at least 15% on either horizon, occupational demand is at or below +5.0%, and the base is under 10,000 awards. A large program that is falling is conditional, because a decline spread across many institutions is a reallocation, not a closure. Strong demand at or above +7.0%, or a positive eight-year trend, earns healthy.
Completions, 2015–2023
National awards across all award levels. 2020 is excluded from the trend calculations because the published data is a near-exact duplicate of 2019; 2023 is provisional.
| Year | Total | Bachelor | Graduate | Institutions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 51,931 | 21,458 | 27,580 | 753 |
| 2016 | 53,588 | 22,142 | 28,588 | 754 |
| 2017 | 55,009 | 22,366 | 29,969 | 758 |
| 2018 | 56,371 | 22,255 | 31,548 | 742 |
| 2019 | 56,611 | 21,409 | 32,842 | 737 |
| 2020 | 56,611 | 21,409 | 32,842 | 737 |
| 2021 | 57,185 | 21,738 | 32,692 | 757 |
| 2022 | 57,822 | 21,113 | 34,015 | 761 |
| 2023 | 56,864 | 18,338 | 35,200 | 780 |
Where the program sits
This program is offered at 583 institutions nationally. The median institution awards 20 credentials a year; the mean is 31.5. The ten largest producers account for 10.7% of all awards.
That distribution matters for a review. A median of 20 means the typical program is small, so a percentage change at one institution is often a handful of students rather than a signal about the field.
The occupations this program feeds
Occupations the NCES crosswalk assigns to this exact CIP code.
| Occupation | Employment | Median wage | Growth | Openings | Entry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Child, Family, and School Social Workers | 382,960 | $58,570 | +4.4% | 33.9 | Bachelor's degree |
| Social and Community Service Managers | 195,490 | $78,240 | +7.2% | 18.5 | Bachelor's degree |
| Healthcare Social Workers | 185,940 | $68,090 | +8.5% | 16.9 | Master's degree |
| Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers | 125,910 | $60,060 | +10.3% | 12.5 | Master's degree |
| Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists | 86,820 | $64,520 | +3.0% | 7.9 | Bachelor's degree |
| Marriage and Family Therapists | 65,870 | $63,780 | +13.5% | 6.9 | Master's degree |
| Social Workers, All Other | 64,940 | $69,480 | +2.3% | 5.8 | Bachelor's degree |
| Counselors, All Other | 33,340 | $49,830 | +5.9% | 4.3 | Master's degree |
Employment and wages are BLS OEWS, May 2024, national. Growth is projected change 2024–2034. Openings are annual, in thousands. These wages describe the labour market the program feeds, not what its graduates earn.
Graduate earnings
Graduates of this field of study earn a median of $55,601 four years after entry and $57,435 five years after entry, across 764 institutions reporting.
The interquartile range at four years runs from $49,690 to $61,719. This is a field-of-study figure from College Scorecard, not an occupation wage.
Where the labour market is moving
Projected occupational change by state, employment-weighted across this program's mapped occupations. The five strongest and five weakest are shown.
| State | Projected change | Annual openings |
|---|---|---|
| Utah | +25.1% | 3,000 |
| California | +19.6% | 46,140 |
| Idaho | +18.9% | 800 |
| Arizona | +17.9% | 4,860 |
| Mississippi | +14.7% | 2,100 |
| Virgin Islands | -8.7% | 10 |
| Louisiana | +0.7% | 2,080 |
| Maine | +1.7% | 1,140 |
| Missouri | +1.7% | 4,620 |
| Ohio | +2.6% | 7,940 |
What this page cannot tell you
- It cannot tell you about your program. Everything here is national. A program's own completions, faculty, facilities, and mission are not in these datasets.
- It cannot tell you about quality. Nothing in IPEDS or BLS measures how well a program teaches.
- It cannot tell you what graduates earn. The occupation wages above are the labour market's, and the Scorecard figures are field-of-study medians, not this program's alumni.
- It cannot see the last two years. IPEDS lags, and 2023 is provisional.
- It is not a closure recommendation. A provost who closed a program on a number generated here would be misusing it.
How Social Work compares
This program against the other eleven profiled here, on the four figures the classification rests on. Rank 1 is the highest of the 12.
| Metric | Social Work | Median of 12 | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 awards | 56,864 | 51,962 | 6 |
| Two-year change | -0.6% | -5.5% | 3 |
| Eight-year change | +9.5% | +4.8% | 4 |
| Occupational demand | +6.5% | +5.1% | 2 |
A rank is a position within this small set, not a judgement. Twelve programs chosen for data completeness are not a representative sample of US higher education, and a rank here says nothing about a program outside it.
See all 12 programs side by side →
Other programs profiled
The same reading, applied to eleven other programs. Each page states its classification, shows every figure behind it, and says what it cannot tell you.
- Management — Healthy
- Nursing — Healthy
- Biology — Healthy
- Computer Science — Healthy
- Marketing — Healthy
- Finance — Healthy
- Accounting — Conditional
- Criminal Justice — Conditional
- English — Conditional
- Communication — Conditional
- Sociology — Conditional
Check your own program
We produce a written viability assessment for a single program: completions against occupational demand, the institution count and per-institution yield, state-level projections, graduate earnings where they exist, and every figure traced to its source and vintage. The first one is free.
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About this page
Award and institution counts are all award levels, 2015–2023, from IPEDS completions via the Urban Institute Education Data Portal (ODC-By v1.0). Occupation employment, wages, and projections are BLS OEWS (May 2024) and BLS Employment Projections (2024–2034), mapped through the NCES CIP–SOC crosswalk. State projections are from Projections Central. Graduate earnings are College Scorecard field-of-study medians. IPEDS data are used under the Open Data Commons Attribution Licence (ODC-By v1.0) and are attributed to the National Center for Education Statistics and the Urban Institute Education Data Portal. College Scorecard data are public domain. BLS data are public domain; no BLS emblem is used. Occupation wages describe the labour market a program feeds, not the earnings of its graduates. Prepared by True Heading Collective LLC.