Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Communication Disorders (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Communication Disorders earn a median of $58,928 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $44,993 and $73,005. We rank the 169 U.S. colleges whose Communication Disorders programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 9,845 graduates in all. That puts Communication Disorders at #66 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
University of Washington-Seattle Campus, in Washington, leads at $80,947, 36% above the median ranked school ($59,436). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $55,426 and $62,592, and the lowest earns $45,806, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 89 of the 169 ranked schools (53%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 10 public, 10 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. California places 6 schools in the top 20, ahead of New York (4).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $22,477 a year, against $16,442 across all 169 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $21,180 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 2.6 years.
Showing the top 50 of 169 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $80,947 | 30 † | $12,542 | $14,091 | 1.4 |
| 2 | CUNY Queens College Queens, NY Public · 4-year | $78,281 | 60 | $11,000 | $4,195 | 0.4 |
| 3 | University of the Pacific Stockton, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $77,549 | 29 † | $16,684 | $25,447 | 2.5 |
| 4 | Iona University New Rochelle, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $77,352 | 53 | $25,000 | $29,188 | 2.8 |
| 5 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $75,137 | 31 † | $12,250 | $10,440 | 1.1 |
| 6 | St. John's University-New York Queens, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $74,937 | 84 | $23,125 | $29,999 | 3.1 |
| 7 | Towson University Towson, MD Public · 4-year | $72,365 | 65 | $21,180 | $17,413 | 2.0 |
| 8 | Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, MD Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,055 | 72 | $27,000 | $30,574 | 3.5 |
| 9 | University of Redlands Redlands, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $71,767 | 49 | $24,000 | $30,031 | 3.5 |
| 10 | California State University-San Marcos San Marcos, CA Public · 4-year | $71,068 | 54 | $15,000 | $10,229 | 1.2 |
| 11 | Abilene Christian University Abilene, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,864 | 39 † | $15,100 | $26,182 | 2.9 |
| 12 | San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year | $70,532 | 56 | $16,500 | $12,278 | 1.5 |
| 13 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $70,141 | 30 † | $17,041 | $21,565 | 2.6 |
| 14 | Marywood University Scranton, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,872 | 42 | $24,181 | $23,388 | 2.8 |
| 15 | Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,730 | 25 † | — | $36,660 | 4.2 |
| 16 | Biola University La Mirada, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,087 | 36 † | $26,522 | $31,495 | 3.9 |
| 17 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $69,033 | 48 | $21,500 | $15,678 | 2.0 |
| 18 | Hofstra University Hempstead, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $68,984 | 33 † | $26,000 | $34,176 | 4.1 |
| 19 | East Carolina University Greenville, NC Public · 4-year | $68,338 | 37 † | $22,750 | $15,739 | 1.8 |
| 20 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $67,975 | 43 | $17,421 | $13,936 | 1.6 |
| 21 | California Baptist University Riverside, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,621 | 44 | $25,625 | $26,285 | 3.4 |
| 22 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $67,405 | 83 | $20,500 | $19,857 | 2.4 |
| 23 | Florida State University Tallahassee, FL Public · 4-year | $67,180 | 83 | $14,767 | $11,297 | 1.4 |
| 24 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $66,995 | 50 | $18,524 | $16,805 | 2.1 |
| 25 | Saint Mary's College Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,587 | 41 | $26,500 | $25,292 | 3.4 |
| 26 | Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania Bloomsburg, PA Public · 4-year | $66,538 | 71 | $26,000 | $15,699 | 2.1 |
| 27 | Marquette University Milwaukee, WI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,501 | 36 † | $26,000 | $31,487 | 4.4 |
| 28 | University of Iowa Iowa City, IA Public · 4-year | $66,377 | 49 | $27,000 | $22,531 | 3.1 |
| 29 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $65,770 | 57 | $19,500 | $23,322 | 3.2 |
| 30 | La Salle University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $65,759 | 34 † | — | $19,409 | 2.7 |
| 31 | University of New Hampshire-Main Campus Durham, NH Public · 4-year | $65,694 | 57 | $26,981 | $23,805 | 4.0 |
| 32 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $65,605 | 76 | $20,500 | $14,355 | 1.9 |
| 33 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $65,370 | 70 | $15,000 | $6,541 | 0.8 |
| 34 | Saint Xavier University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $65,233 | 41 | $15,000 | $10,970 | 1.5 |
| 35 | California State University-Northridge Northridge, CA Public · 4-year | $65,188 | 110 | $15,823 | $7,021 | 1.0 |
| 36 | Duquesne University Pittsburgh, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $64,196 | 42 | $27,000 | $37,730 | 5.4 |
| 37 | Baylor University Waco, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,909 | 81 | $19,681 | $41,104 | 5.7 |
| 38 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA Public · 4-year | $63,620 | 45 | $22,375 | $22,383 | 4.0 |
| 39 | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh, PA Public · 4-year | $63,436 | 83 | $25,294 | $30,434 | 4.5 |
| 40 | California State University-Sacramento Sacramento, CA Public · 4-year | $63,013 | 183 | $16,250 | $9,338 | 1.4 |
| 41 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $62,855 | 71 | $16,148 | $14,480 | 2.2 |
| 42 | California State University-East Bay Hayward, CA Public · 4-year | $62,720 | 29 † | — | $9,320 | 1.4 |
| 43 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $62,592 | 76 | $22,421 | $18,209 | 2.4 |
| 44 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $62,575 | 47 | $25,000 | $28,384 | 4.3 |
| 45 | Illinois State University Normal, IL Public · 4-year | $62,510 | 71 | $19,500 | $19,398 | 2.9 |
| 46 | California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA Public · 4-year | $62,436 | 160 | $14,750 | $6,555 | 1.0 |
| 47 | State University of New York at Cortland Cortland, NY Public · 4-year | $62,122 | 78 | $20,187 | $22,345 | 3.4 |
| 48 | Central Michigan University Mount Pleasant, MI Public · 4-year | $62,082 | 120 | $23,250 | $17,597 | 2.6 |
| 49 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $62,072 | 138 | $23,250 | $32,875 | 5.1 |
| 50 | Temple University Philadelphia, PA Public · 4-year | $62,061 | 69 | $25,000 | $28,198 | 4.4 |
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 Communication Disorders (CIP 5102, 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 169.
- 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 Communication Disorders 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maryland | $72,055 | 3 | Towson University |
| California | $65,188 | 15 | University of the Pacific |
| Pennsylvania | $62,754 | 10 | Marywood University |
| Virginia | $62,489 | 4 | University of Virginia-Main Campus |
| New York | $61,126 | 14 | CUNY Queens College |
| Illinois | $60,348 | 8 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| Indiana | $59,625 | 6 | Saint Mary's College |
| Texas | $59,624 | 13 | Abilene Christian University |
| Michigan | $59,453 | 6 | Central Michigan University |
| Kansas | $59,436 | 3 | Kansas State University |
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