Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Aviation and Air Transportation (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Aviation and Air Transportation earn a median of $85,825 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $61,701 and $118,209. We rank the 36 U.S. colleges whose Aviation and Air Transportation programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 4,105 graduates in all. That puts Aviation and Air Transportation at #20 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Utah Valley University, in Utah, leads at $106,001, 27% above the median ranked school ($83,283). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $76,337 and $90,642, and the lowest earns $57,665, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 15 of the 36 ranked schools (42%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 13 public, 7 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 14 states, with Florida the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,790 a year, against $16,706 across all 36 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $22,067 in federal loans, about 25% 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 1.2 years.
Showing the top 36 of 36 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Utah Valley University Orem, UT Public · 4-year | $106,001 | 204 | $21,504 | $6,376 | 0.4 |
| 2 | University of North Dakota Grand Forks, ND Public · 4-year | $104,472 | 272 | $21,500 | $18,551 | 1.1 |
| 3 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $103,989 | 35 † | $25,000 | $14,936 | 0.9 |
| 4 | Minnesota State University-Mankato Mankato, MN Public · 4-year | $103,858 | 57 | $19,500 | $19,139 | 1.2 |
| 5 | Liberty University Lynchburg, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $102,096 | 236 | $22,420 | $29,357 | 1.8 |
| 6 | Ohio University-Main Campus Athens, OH Public · 4-year | $99,701 | 29 † | $22,067 | $21,637 | 1.4 |
| 7 | Middle Georgia State University Macon, GA Public · 4-year | $93,627 | 83 | $19,500 | $12,361 | 0.8 |
| 8 | Eastern Michigan University Ypsilanti, MI Public · 4-year | $91,648 | 25 † | $29,591 | $15,407 | 1.1 |
| 9 | University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus Norman, OK Public · 4-year | $91,081 | 31 † | $20,500 | $15,300 | 1.1 |
| 10 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach Daytona Beach, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $90,495 | 1,152 | $23,250 | $41,272 | 2.9 |
| 11 | Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI Public · 4-year | $89,564 | 138 | $25,500 | $15,273 | 1.1 |
| 12 | Lewis University Romeoville, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $87,197 | 135 | $25,000 | $17,028 | 1.3 |
| 13 | Everglades University Boca Raton, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,730 | 74 | $34,329 | $27,371 | 2.1 |
| 14 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $86,161 | 102 | $19,500 | $14,600 | 1.2 |
| 15 | University of Dubuque Dubuque, IA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,081 | 43 | $25,375 | $23,386 | 1.9 |
| 16 | Kansas State University Manhattan, KS Public · 4-year | $85,147 | 58 | $20,500 | $19,406 | 1.5 |
| 17 | Westminster University Salt Lake City, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,574 | 25 † | — | $27,094 | 2.4 |
| 18 | Louisiana Tech University Ruston, LA Public · 4-year | $83,323 | 39 † | $20,385 | $11,864 | 1.0 |
| 19 | Florida Institute of Technology Melbourne, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,243 | 86 | $27,000 | $35,639 | 2.9 |
| 20 | Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Carbondale, IL Public · 4-year | $81,394 | 150 | $18,750 | $13,297 | 1.2 |
| 21 | University of Alaska Anchorage Anchorage, AK Public · 4-year | $80,981 | 43 | $25,142 | $15,301 | 1.6 |
| 22 | Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN Public · 4-year | $80,424 | 157 | $20,500 | $13,359 | 1.2 |
| 23 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $79,821 | 115 | $21,375 | $14,967 | 1.4 |
| 24 | LeTourneau University Longview, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,277 | 43 | $26,000 | $28,185 | 2.5 |
| 25 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $79,114 | 71 | $21,731 | $17,339 | 1.6 |
| 26 | Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology Flushing, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,979 | 95 | $23,500 | $39,986 | 3.9 |
| 27 | Kent State University at Kent Kent, OH Public · 4-year | $76,501 | 117 | $23,711 | $20,787 | 2.1 |
| 28 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus Bowling Green, OH Public · 4-year | $75,845 | 47 | $21,500 | $24,022 | 2.4 |
| 29 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus Stillwater, OK Public · 4-year | $75,469 | 75 | $18,625 | $17,447 | 1.7 |
| 30 | University of Nebraska at Omaha Omaha, NE Public · 4-year | $75,314 | 28 † | $21,000 | $13,441 | 1.4 |
| 31 | Central Washington University Ellensburg, WA Public · 4-year | $74,997 | 41 | $20,000 | $18,476 | 2.1 |
| 32 | Metropolitan State University of Denver Denver, CO Public · 4-year | $72,846 | 57 | $23,556 | $15,327 | 1.9 |
| 33 | Farmingdale State College Farmingdale, NY Public · 4-year | $72,195 | 66 | $18,000 | $10,867 | 1.2 |
| 34 | Indiana State University Terre Haute, IN Public · 4-year | $71,254 | 65 | $23,480 | $10,873 | 1.3 |
| 35 | Bridgewater State University Bridgewater, MA Public · 4-year | $70,215 | 67 | $25,000 | $16,383 | 2.2 |
| 36 | CUNY York College Jamaica, NY Public · 4-year | $57,665 | 44 | — | $4,456 | 0.8 |
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 Aviation and Air Transportation (CIP 4901, 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 36.
- 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 Aviation and Air Transportation 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utah | $103,989 | 3 | Utah Valley University |
| Florida | $86,730 | 3 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach |
| Ohio | $77,808 | 4 | Ohio University-Main Campus |
| New York | $72,195 | 3 | Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology |
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