Tuition costs keep rising, recent graduates face an uncertain job market, and many families question how much a college degree is really worth.There are parts of the college experience that are hard to quantify, from building a network to learning how to think critically and live independently.There's one thing, however, that can help put the financial value of a college degree into perspective: how much money you earn once you have it.Each year, the Department of Education publishes data on college costs, student debt, completion rates, and earnings outcomes for students who received Title IV federal aid, about 13 million students annually, including federal grants, student loans, or work-study programs.The College Scorecard, the department's public database, lists the median annual earnings for former students four years after completing their degrees at each school.The data, like most measures used in college rankings, has its limitations. The College Scorecard's median earnings metric only measures the annual earnings of former students who received federal aid, were earning income, and were not enrolled in another institution at the four-year mark.Still, the data can help paint a picture of how a college degree can shape early-career earnings for some recent graduates. Factors like majors and geography can also affect how much graduates can potentially earn. Graduates entering high-paying fields such as computer science, engineering, or healthcare may earn more early in their careers than those pursuing different academic fields.Location can also play an important role, since salaries tend to be higher in areas with higher costs of living and expensive labor markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and the Bay Area.Using College Scorecard data, Business Insider ranked US colleges and universities that grant bachelor's degrees based on the median annual earnings of former students four years after graduation. The ranking includes traditional colleges and universities as well as specialized institutions, focused on fields such as health sciences or nursing.We highlighted each school's location and some of the top fields its students pursue, as reported by Niche and US News & World Report. Overwhelmingly, the science, healthcare, and engineering fields dominated the list, while economics, business, and some humanities and social science fields also appear throughout.See which 34 schools across the US ranked highest for median earnings four years after graduation.