Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Communication and Media Studies (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Communication and Media Studies earn a median of $43,243 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $26,665 and $60,636. We rank the 24 U.S. colleges whose Communication and Media Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,061 graduates in all. That puts Communication and Media Studies at #17 of 27 associate degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
West Valley College, in California, leads at $65,280, 48% above the median ranked school ($44,035). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $37,229 and $50,890, and the lowest earns $29,371. 15 of the 24 ranked schools (63%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 20 public, 0 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 100% are public. California places 9 schools in the top 20, ahead of Pennsylvania (4).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $6,869 a year, against $6,869 across all 24 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $10,875 in federal loans, about 24% 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 24 of 24 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | West Valley College Saratoga, CA Public · 2-year | $65,280 | 42 | — | $3,423 | 0.2 |
| 2 | College of San Mateo San Mateo, CA Public · 2-year | $65,120 | 37 † | — | $536 | <0.1 |
| 3 | Salt Lake Community College Salt Lake City, UT Public · 2-year | $56,408 | 28 † | — | $9,804 | 1.1 |
| 4 | San Diego Mesa College San Diego, CA Public · 4-year | $56,321 | 57 | — | $5,814 | 0.6 |
| 5 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus Cincinnati, OH Public · 4-year | $55,995 | 35 † | $17,392 | $25,648 | 2.6 |
| 6 | De Anza College Cupertino, CA Public · 4-year | $53,738 | 45 | — | $6,642 | 0.8 |
| 7 | College of the Canyons Santa Clarita, CA Public · 4-year | $49,940 | 44 | — | $3,702 | 0.6 |
| 8 | Delaware County Community College Media, PA Public · 2-year | $47,470 | 34 † | — | $6,576 | 1.2 |
| 9 | Nassau Community College Garden City, NY Public · 2-year | $47,054 | 58 | $10,875 | $7,095 | 1.3 |
| 10 | Pasadena City College Pasadena, CA Public · 2-year | $45,235 | 49 | — | $3,864 | 0.9 |
| 11 | Mt San Antonio College Walnut, CA Public · 2-year | $44,550 | 41 | — | $6,490 | 1.7 |
| 12 | Riverside City College Riverside, CA Public · 2-year | $44,269 | 44 | — | $8,377 | 2.3 |
| 13 | CUNY LaGuardia Community College Long Island City, NY Public · 2-year | $43,801 | 86 | — | $6,120 | 1.5 |
| 14 | CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College New York, NY Public · 2-year | $43,763 | 112 | $8,600 | $4,976 | 1.2 |
| 15 | County College of Morris Randolph, NJ Public · 2-year | $43,668 | 28 † | — | $8,895 | 2.7 |
| 16 | Community College of Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA Public · 2-year | $39,860 | 72 | $10,125 | $11,911 | 7.1 |
| 17 | Montgomery County Community College Blue Bell, PA Public · 2-year | $39,366 | 34 † | $11,000 | $11,124 | 7.8 |
| 18 | Southwestern College (CA) Chula Vista, CA Public · 2-year | $37,303 | 31 † | — | $12,671 | — |
| 19 | UCNJ Union College of Union County New Jersey Cranford, NJ Public · 2-year | $37,008 | 28 † | $10,750 | $8,257 | — |
| 20 | Northampton County Area Community College Bethlehem, PA Public · 2-year | $36,736 | 26 † | $15,500 | $12,119 | — |
| 21 | Monroe Community College Rochester, NY Public · 2-year | $36,389 | 31 † | $9,375 | $6,353 | — |
| 22 | Erie Community College Buffalo, NY Public · 2-year | $31,535 | 32 † | — | $7,765 | — |
| 23 | Dutchess Community College Poughkeepsie, NY Public · 2-year | $30,308 | 41 | $8,937 | $10,065 | — |
| 24 | Santa Monica College Santa Monica, CA Public · 4-year | $29,371 | 26 † | — | $2,779 | — |
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 associate degree programs in Communication and Media Studies (CIP 0901, 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 24.
- 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: 2 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 Communication and Media 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $47,588 | 10 | West Valley College |
| New York | $40,076 | 6 | Nassau Community College |
| Pennsylvania | $39,613 | 4 | Delaware County Community College |
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