Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Area Studies (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Area Studies earn a median of $56,625 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $37,190 and $78,481. We rank the 35 U.S. colleges whose Area Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,706 graduates in all. That puts Area Studies at #77 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Columbia University in the City of New York, in New York, leads at $96,884, 66% above the median ranked school ($58,245). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $51,443 and $68,110, and the lowest earns $37,949. 21 of the 35 ranked schools (60%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 10 public, 10 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 17 states, with New York the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $21,578 a year, against $19,096 across all 35 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,802 in federal loans, about 30% of one year of earnings. Measured against a typical high-school graduate in the same state, the median top-20 school recovers its net cost in about 2.8 years.
Showing the top 35 of 35 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Columbia University in the City of New York New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $96,884 | 29 † | $21,636 | $21,590 | 1.4 |
| 2 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $79,449 | 54 | $20,526 | $28,384 | 2.6 |
| 3 | Bowdoin College Brunswick, ME Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,966 | 30 † | $24,000 | $14,398 | 1.5 |
| 4 | Fordham University Bronx, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,563 | 53 | $26,000 | $44,338 | 4.5 |
| 5 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $75,230 | 89 | $21,000 | $20,268 | 2.0 |
| 6 | Emory University Atlanta, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,205 | 29 † | $19,500 | $22,585 | 2.2 |
| 7 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $70,366 | 79 | $14,839 | $13,481 | 1.6 |
| 8 | Tufts University Medford, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,037 | 31 † | — | $39,998 | 5.7 |
| 9 | William & Mary Williamsburg, VA Public · 4-year | $68,909 | 33 † | $13,000 | $19,096 | 2.4 |
| 10 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,310 | 52 | $11,229 | $15,564 | 2.2 |
| 11 | Barnard College New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,117 | 27 † | $19,000 | $28,800 | 3.8 |
| 12 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $65,970 | 42 | $21,965 | $21,565 | 2.9 |
| 13 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $65,933 | 223 | $13,261 | $11,655 | 1.5 |
| 14 | Dickinson College Carlisle, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,874 | 36 † | $19,802 | $37,607 | 5.5 |
| 15 | Connecticut College New London, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,749 | 29 † | $21,220 | $36,175 | 6.3 |
| 16 | Brown University Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,808 | 38 † | $12,000 | $25,184 | 5.2 |
| 17 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $59,469 | 31 † | $17,750 | $15,678 | 2.9 |
| 18 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $58,245 | 35 † | $22,015 | $24,406 | 4.6 |
| 19 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $58,232 | 46 | $13,821 | $13,138 | 2.2 |
| 20 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $57,009 | 53 | $20,750 | $19,857 | 3.6 |
| 21 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $56,926 | 74 | $14,845 | $14,091 | 3.5 |
| 22 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $55,733 | 26 † | $20,196 | $17,354 | 3.8 |
| 23 | Brandeis University Waltham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $54,306 | 40 | $26,000 | $35,736 | 10.8 |
| 24 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $54,187 | 34 † | — | $14,355 | 3.2 |
| 25 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $53,200 | 39 † | $13,000 | $14,936 | 4.1 |
| 26 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $51,755 | 55 | $17,090 | $12,548 | 3.4 |
| 27 | Smith College Northampton, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,131 | 26 † | $19,000 | $27,579 | 10.9 |
| 28 | California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA Public · 4-year | $50,739 | 86 | $17,500 | $6,555 | 1.9 |
| 29 | University at Albany Albany, NY Public · 4-year | $50,572 | 28 † | $21,361 | $17,167 | 4.6 |
| 30 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $50,071 | 67 | $15,348 | $10,440 | 3.2 |
| 31 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $48,162 | 37 † | $23,750 | $16,674 | 5.7 |
| 32 | Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA Public · 4-year | $45,852 | 69 | $22,625 | $23,433 | 10.1 |
| 33 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $41,818 | 29 † | $16,500 | $14,480 | 12.0 |
| 34 | Western Washington University Bellingham, WA Public · 4-year | $40,623 | 30 † | $15,000 | $21,193 | — |
| 35 | University of New Mexico-Main Campus Albuquerque, NM Public · 4-year | $37,949 | 27 † | $17,500 | $15,489 | 10.8 |
How this ranking is built
A school appears here only if it meets every condition below.
- Which programs count
- Main campuses only, one entry per institution. Scorecard reports program outcomes for the whole six-digit federal ID (OPEID6), so branch campuses share their parent’s numbers and are not listed twice.
- Only bachelor's degree programs in Area Studies (CIP 0501, the four-digit code Scorecard uses to group related programs).
- At least 25 graduates in the earnings sample. Smaller samples are left out because their medians swing too much and the counts carry a little privacy noise.
- A major gets a page only when at least 20 schools qualify. This one has 35.
- Ranked by median earnings 4 years after completing, highest first. Ties go to the larger sample, then to the school name.
- Schools missing earnings or a sample size are left out rather than estimated.
- What the numbers mean
- Earnings: median annual earnings of graduates four years after completing. The cohort completed in academic years 2017-18 and 2018-19 and was measured in calendar years 2022 and 2023, in 2024 dollars.
- Who is counted: graduates who received federal student aid (Title IV grants or loans), and only those who were working and not enrolled in more school that year. Graduates without federal aid, those who went on to further study and those with no earnings are not in the median.
- Scorecard adds privacy noise to counts and medians and hides values it cannot protect, so a gap of a few percent between two schools is not meaningful.
- Graduates: the number of graduates in that earnings sample. A † marks fewer than 40, where the figure is less precise.
- Debt: median federal loan debt (Stafford and Grad PLUS loans disbursed at that school) of graduates who borrowed, from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 completers. Parent PLUS and private loans are not included.
- Net price: average yearly cost after grants and scholarships for the whole institution, not this major, academic year 2023-24.
- Payback: 4 years of net price divided by how much these earnings exceed a high-school graduate’s in the school’s state. Shown only when that gap is at least $2,000, the same formula as the rest of the site.
- Source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard field-of-study data, June 2026 release.
Top states for Area Studies earnings
Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.
| State | Median earnings | Ranked schools | Top school |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | $70,840 | 4 | Columbia University in the City of New York |
| Virginia | $65,970 | 3 | William & Mary |
| Massachusetts | $54,306 | 3 | Tufts University |
| California | $50,739 | 5 | University of California-Berkeley |
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