Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Arts and Media Management (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Arts and Media Management earn a median of $48,240 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $31,627 and $64,853. We rank the 29 U.S. colleges whose Arts and Media Management programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,614 graduates in all. That puts Arts and Media Management at #118 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
The New School, in New York, leads at $74,936, 50% above the median ranked school ($50,112). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $45,369 and $59,649, and the lowest earns $35,867. 17 of the 29 ranked schools (59%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 9 public, 11 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. New York places 7 schools in the top 20, ahead of Alabama (1).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $24,535 a year, against $23,696 across all 29 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $24,469 in federal loans, about 46% 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 5.3 years.
Showing the top 29 of 29 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | The New School New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $74,936 | 76 | $24,500 | $58,741 | 6.0 |
| 2 | Wagner College Staten Island, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $65,373 | 35 † | $27,000 | $28,241 | 3.8 |
| 3 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,353 | 48 | $20,353 | $32,740 | 5.0 |
| 4 | Pace University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,064 | 89 | $25,167 | $30,892 | 4.7 |
| 5 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,819 | 44 | $27,000 | $38,793 | 6.0 |
| 6 | Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, IN Public · 4-year | $60,046 | 38 † | $21,908 | $16,264 | 2.8 |
| 7 | Berklee College of Music Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,703 | 27 † | $25,543 | $49,465 | 10.6 |
| 8 | University of Central Florida Orlando, FL Public · 4-year | $59,649 | 51 | $20,696 | $10,411 | 1.6 |
| 9 | Drexel University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $54,328 | 101 | $24,808 | $38,509 | 8.6 |
| 10 | Belmont University Nashville, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $53,893 | 435 | $20,500 | $33,147 | 6.9 |
| 11 | College of Charleston Charleston, SC Public · 4-year | $52,674 | 74 | $21,500 | $18,960 | 4.2 |
| 12 | SUNY at Purchase College Purchase, NY Public · 4-year | $51,954 | 76 | $19,500 | $18,913 | 4.7 |
| 13 | SUNY at Fredonia Fredonia, NY Public · 4-year | $50,671 | 47 | $23,625 | $15,897 | 4.3 |
| 14 | Columbia College Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,592 | 216 | $25,000 | $26,598 | 7.3 |
| 15 | University of New Haven West Haven, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,112 | 40 | $27,000 | $34,192 | 11.0 |
| 16 | University of Kentucky Lexington, KY Public · 4-year | $49,167 | 30 † | $27,000 | $18,851 | 5.5 |
| 17 | Ferris State University Big Rapids, MI Public · 4-year | $48,367 | 46 | $22,833 | $8,624 | 2.5 |
| 18 | University of North Alabama Florence, AL Public · 4-year | $48,020 | 43 | $24,437 | $12,170 | 3.1 |
| 19 | Grand Canyon University Phoenix, AZ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $47,821 | 35 † | $27,000 | $22,472 | 7.9 |
| 20 | SUNY Oneonta Oneonta, NY Public · 4-year | $47,324 | 96 | $20,500 | $19,158 | 6.6 |
| 21 | Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN Public · 4-year | $46,349 | 271 | $21,500 | $13,359 | 4.6 |
| 22 | Dallas Baptist University Dallas, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,369 | 31 † | $22,781 | $28,516 | 10.8 |
| 23 | Howard University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $44,345 | 25 † | $27,000 | $50,539 | 48.1 |
| 24 | Appalachian State University Boone, NC Public · 4-year | $44,297 | 25 † | $23,487 | $16,836 | 6.6 |
| 25 | Loyola University New Orleans New Orleans, LA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,089 | 88 | $26,947 | $23,696 | 12.2 |
| 26 | University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS Public · 4-year | $41,095 | 53 | $24,990 | $21,708 | 8.5 |
| 27 | Full Sail University Winter Park, FL For-profit · 4-year | $38,847 | 287 | $35,282 | $38,875 | 34.6 |
| 28 | Los Angeles Film School Hollywood, CA For-profit · 4-year | $37,857 | 162 | $37,875 | $30,980 | — |
| 29 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $35,867 | 25 † | — | $17,303 | — |
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 Arts and Media Management (CIP 5010, 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 29.
- 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 Arts and Media Management 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 | $61,819 | 7 | The New School |
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Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
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$48,460 national median · 42 schools
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