Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Culinary Arts (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Culinary Arts earn a median of $39,605 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $26,731 and $52,757. We rank the 44 U.S. colleges whose Culinary Arts programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 4,710 graduates in all. That puts Culinary Arts at #21 of 27 associate degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
SUNY College of Technology at Delhi, in New York, leads at $50,208, 30% above the median ranked school ($38,577). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $36,290 and $41,575, and the lowest earns $27,150, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 19 of the 44 ranked schools (43%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 12 public, 7 private nonprofit and 1 for-profit. New York places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Michigan (4).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $11,173 a year, against $11,289 across all 44 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $12,000 in federal loans, about 29% 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 3.4 years.
Showing the top 44 of 44 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | SUNY College of Technology at Delhi Delhi, NY Public · 4-year | $50,208 | 32 † | — | $17,225 | 2.4 |
| 2 | Southern New Hampshire University Manchester, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,055 | 33 † | — | $36,708 | 9.1 |
| 3 | Culinary Institute of America Hyde Park, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,317 | 1,172 | $12,000 | $36,113 | 5.7 |
| 4 | Schenectady County Community College Schenectady, NY Public · 2-year | $48,073 | 28 † | — | $8,947 | 1.5 |
| 5 | Kalamazoo Valley Community College Kalamazoo, MI Public · 2-year | $45,697 | 36 † | $11,250 | $2,979 | 0.5 |
| 6 | National Louis University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,609 | 73 | $12,833 | $12,641 | 2.7 |
| 7 | Grand Rapids Community College Grand Rapids, MI Public · 2-year | $45,302 | 52 | $12,319 | $8,621 | 1.6 |
| 8 | Dallas College Dallas, TX Public · 4-year | $44,490 | 35 † | — | $3,214 | 0.7 |
| 9 | Johnson & Wales University-Providence Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,395 | 870 | $14,167 | $31,027 | — |
| 10 | Kirkwood Community College Cedar Rapids, IA Public · 2-year | $42,218 | 35 † | $9,511 | $9,705 | 3.8 |
| 11 | Paul Smiths College of Arts and Science Paul Smiths, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $41,909 | 34 † | — | $26,683 | 8.7 |
| 12 | Utah Valley University Orem, UT Public · 4-year | $41,464 | 33 † | — | $6,376 | 4.4 |
| 13 | Pikes Peak State College Colorado Springs, CO Public · 4-year | $41,389 | 32 † | — | $6,007 | — |
| 14 | Culinary Institute Inc Houston, TX For-profit · 4-year | $41,359 | 160 | $26,531 | $30,428 | 9.3 |
| 15 | Niagara County Community College Sanborn, NY Public · 2-year | $41,072 | 93 | $11,970 | $6,876 | 2.6 |
| 16 | Keiser University-Ft Lauderdale Fort Lauderdale, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $40,731 | 69 | $18,500 | $30,498 | 9.6 |
| 17 | Saint Louis Community College Bridgeton, MO Public · 4-year | $40,669 | 41 | — | $8,440 | 2.9 |
| 18 | Northwestern Michigan College Traverse City, MI Public · 4-year | $40,148 | 28 † | $11,000 | $6,231 | 2.3 |
| 19 | Johnson County Community College Overland Park, KS Public · 2-year | $39,695 | 27 † | — | $14,176 | 5.9 |
| 20 | Baker College Owosso, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $39,471 | 114 | $12,000 | $13,157 | 5.6 |
| 21 | Delaware Technical Community College-Terry Dover, DE Public · 4-year | $38,938 | 43 | — | $11,578 | 9.5 |
| 22 | Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts-Austin Austin, TX For-profit · 2-year | $38,626 | 251 | $16,880 | $19,564 | 10.3 |
| 23 | Walnut Hill College Philadelphia, PA For-profit · 4-year | $38,528 | 98 | $12,000 | $32,351 | 31.9 |
| 24 | Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology Okmulgee, OK Public · 4-year | $38,487 | 31 † | $14,167 | $10,999 | 6.0 |
| 25 | Hudson County Community College Jersey City, NJ Public · 2-year | $38,349 | 63 | $11,500 | $7,307 | — |
| 26 | College of Southern Nevada Las Vegas, NV Public · 4-year | $38,198 | 51 | — | $6,615 | — |
| 27 | Tidewater Community College Norfolk, VA Public · 2-year | $37,564 | 36 † | $16,637 | $11,762 | — |
| 28 | Schoolcraft Community College District Livonia, MI Public · 4-year | $37,459 | 38 † | $16,325 | $2,260 | 1.7 |
| 29 | Sullivan University Louisville, KY For-profit · 4-year | $37,099 | 197 | $14,727 | $25,532 | — |
| 30 | Monroe University Bronx, NY For-profit · 4-year | $36,798 | 120 | $12,030 | $14,522 | — |
| 31 | Kapiolani Community College Honolulu, HI Public · 2-year | $36,663 | 26 † | — | $5,202 | — |
| 32 | SUNY College of Technology at Alfred Alfred, NY Public · 4-year | $36,622 | 36 † | $12,000 | $15,016 | — |
| 33 | Spokane Community College Spokane, WA Public · 4-year | $36,311 | 28 † | — | $5,473 | — |
| 34 | ECPI University Virginia Beach, VA For-profit · 4-year | $36,225 | 266 | $17,896 | $22,965 | — |
| 35 | Erie Community College Buffalo, NY Public · 2-year | $35,337 | 36 † | $6,439 | $7,765 | — |
| 36 | CUNY Kingsborough Community College Brooklyn, NY Public · 2-year | $35,003 | 41 | — | $5,606 | — |
| 37 | Central Piedmont Community College Charlotte, NC Public · 2-year | $34,705 | 41 | — | $3,345 | — |
| 38 | Ozarks Technical Community College Springfield, MO Public · 4-year | $34,685 | 39 † | $8,933 | $6,936 | — |
| 39 | Pennsylvania College of Technology Williamsport, PA Public · 4-year | $34,308 | 32 † | $15,638 | $25,110 | — |
| 40 | Guilford Technical Community College Jamestown, NC Public · 2-year | $34,159 | 37 † | — | $15,002 | — |
| 41 | Daytona State College Daytona Beach, FL Public · 4-year | $33,703 | 30 † | $11,279 | $7,177 | — |
| 42 | Miller-Motte College-Chattanooga Chattanooga, TN For-profit · 4-year | $33,298 | 75 | $19,337 | $23,958 | — |
| 43 | Louisiana Culinary Institute Baton Rouge, LA For-profit · 2-year | $28,862 | 55 | — | $28,869 | — |
| 44 | Houston City College Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $27,150 | 43 | $20,327 | $5,737 | — |
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 Culinary Arts (CIP 1205, 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 44.
- 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 Culinary Arts 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 | $41,072 | 9 | SUNY College of Technology at Delhi |
| Michigan | $40,148 | 5 | Kalamazoo Valley Community College |
| Texas | $39,993 | 4 | Dallas College |
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