Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Dance (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Dance earn a median of $39,980 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $24,910 and $57,333. We rank the 23 U.S. colleges whose Dance programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 876 graduates in all. That puts Dance at #130 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Muhlenberg College, in Pennsylvania, leads at $56,503, 38% above the median ranked school ($40,797). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $37,716 and $46,712, and the lowest earns $30,406. 13 of the 23 ranked schools (57%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 10 public, 10 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. New York places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Pennsylvania (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $25,174 a year, against $22,857 across all 23 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $26,080 in federal loans, about 61% 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 13.7 years.
Showing the top 23 of 23 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Muhlenberg College Allentown, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,503 | 26 † | $27,000 | $28,905 | 5.8 |
| 2 | Texas Woman's University Denton, TX Public · 4-year | $53,072 | 31 † | $21,280 | $11,963 | 2.6 |
| 3 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $53,057 | 55 | $20,500 | $16,805 | 3.7 |
| 4 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $51,736 | 36 † | $25,565 | $24,406 | 6.6 |
| 5 | Chapman University Orange, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,612 | 31 † | $23,624 | $46,555 | 13.7 |
| 6 | Fordham University Bronx, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $47,036 | 32 † | $25,000 | $44,338 | 15.7 |
| 7 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $46,387 | 27 † | $20,500 | $10,440 | 4.4 |
| 8 | Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI Public · 4-year | $45,108 | 30 † | $27,000 | $15,273 | 5.9 |
| 9 | University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, NC Public · 4-year | $45,084 | 35 † | $25,000 | $10,965 | 4.0 |
| 10 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $43,987 | 29 † | $23,393 | $14,967 | 8.0 |
| 11 | Columbia College Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $41,842 | 39 † | $27,000 | $26,598 | 18.5 |
| 12 | Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania Slippery Rock, PA Public · 4-year | $40,797 | 28 † | $27,000 | $19,608 | 18.2 |
| 13 | SUNY Brockport Brockport, NY Public · 4-year | $40,516 | 27 † | $21,500 | $16,353 | 13.7 |
| 14 | Pace University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $39,716 | 43 | $27,000 | $30,892 | 31.1 |
| 15 | Montclair State University Montclair, NJ Public · 4-year | $39,064 | 46 | $26,776 | $15,566 | 29.8 |
| 16 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $38,571 | 33 † | $23,004 | $37,050 | 52.5 |
| 17 | Marymount Manhattan College New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $38,227 | 50 | $26,595 | $36,861 | 59.4 |
| 18 | Point Park University Pittsburgh, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $37,205 | 59 | $27,000 | $25,942 | — |
| 19 | Dean College Franklin, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $36,644 | 63 | $27,000 | $30,684 | — |
| 20 | Berklee College of Music Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $35,702 | 30 † | $27,000 | $49,465 | — |
| 21 | Oklahoma City University Oklahoma City, OK Private nonprofit · 4-year | $34,105 | 39 † | $24,100 | $22,857 | — |
| 22 | University of North Carolina School of the Arts Winston Salem, NC Public · 4-year | $32,463 | 40 | $22,454 | $14,906 | — |
| 23 | SUNY at Purchase College Purchase, NY Public · 4-year | $30,406 | 47 | $26,000 | $18,913 | — |
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 Dance (CIP 5003, 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 23.
- 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 Dance 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | $40,797 | 3 | Muhlenberg College |
| New York | $39,144 | 6 | Fordham University |
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