Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Dental Support Services (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Dental Support Services earn a median of $61,982 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $42,175 and $79,205. We rank the 98 U.S. colleges whose Dental Support Services programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 4,143 graduates in all. That puts Dental Support Services at #4 of 27 associate degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
Northern Virginia Community College, in Virginia, leads at $91,137, 41% above the median ranked school ($64,658). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $58,537 and $72,260, and the lowest earns $35,042. 61 of the 98 ranked schools (62%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 17 public, 2 private nonprofit and 1 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 86% are public. New Jersey places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of New York (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $9,647 a year, against $9,824 across all 98 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $18,248 in federal loans, about 23% 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 0.5 years.
Showing the top 50 of 98 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Northern Virginia Community College Annandale, VA Public · 2-year | $91,137 | 32 † | $20,250 | $9,919 | 0.4 |
| 2 | Community College of Denver Denver, CO Public · 4-year | $90,193 | 41 | $21,000 | $9,450 | 0.4 |
| 3 | Eastern International College-Jersey City Jersey City, NJ For-profit · 4-year | $84,902 | 58 | $25,983 | $21,111 | 0.9 |
| 4 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,978 | 78 | $19,000 | $37,050 | 1.6 |
| 5 | Camden County College Blackwood, NJ Public · 2-year | $82,821 | 30 † | — | $5,996 | 0.3 |
| 6 | Community College of Baltimore County Baltimore, MD Public · 2-year | $82,293 | 40 | — | $9,844 | 0.4 |
| 7 | Mt Hood Community College Gresham, OR Public · 4-year | $81,207 | 27 † | — | $7,821 | 0.4 |
| 8 | Middlesex College Edison, NJ Public · 2-year | $81,043 | 38 † | — | $2,288 | 0.1 |
| 9 | Farmingdale State College Farmingdale, NY Public · 4-year | $80,938 | 47 | $13,564 | $10,867 | 0.5 |
| 10 | Rose State College Midwest City, OK Public · 4-year | $80,174 | 29 † | — | $12,148 | 0.5 |
| 11 | University of Alaska Anchorage Anchorage, AK Public · 4-year | $79,942 | 27 † | — | $15,301 | 0.8 |
| 12 | CUNY Hostos Community College Bronx, NY Public · 2-year | $79,357 | 57 | $16,500 | $5,297 | 0.2 |
| 13 | Rock Valley College Rockford, IL Public · 2-year | $76,660 | 25 † | — | $5,242 | 0.3 |
| 14 | NHTI-Concord's Community College Concord, NH Public · 2-year | $76,278 | 40 | $18,248 | $18,011 | 1.1 |
| 15 | University of Bridgeport Bridgeport, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,208 | 48 | $20,972 | $27,807 | 1.4 |
| 16 | Cape Cod Community College West Barnstable, MA Public · 2-year | $75,929 | 33 † | $14,498 | $8,296 | 0.5 |
| 17 | Hagerstown Community College Hagerstown, MD Public · 2-year | $75,920 | 30 † | $13,000 | $6,835 | 0.4 |
| 18 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $75,372 | 32 † | — | $24,406 | 1.3 |
| 19 | Middlesex Community College Bedford, MA Public · 2-year | $75,312 | 43 | $13,312 | $2,624 | 0.2 |
| 20 | Lane Community College Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $74,428 | 33 † | — | $9,123 | 0.5 |
| 21 | Great Falls College Montana State University Great Falls, MT Public · 2-year | $74,001 | 27 † | — | $12,468 | 0.6 |
| 22 | Goodwin University East Hartford, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $73,765 | 45 | $12,039 | $29,249 | 1.6 |
| 23 | Portland Community College Portland, OR Public · 2-year | $73,457 | 34 † | $16,625 | $10,405 | 0.6 |
| 24 | Bergen Community College Paramus, NJ Public · 2-year | $73,064 | 52 | $17,183 | $10,345 | 0.6 |
| 25 | SUNY College of Technology at Canton Canton, NY Public · 4-year | $72,293 | 32 † | — | $15,268 | 0.8 |
| 26 | Plaza College Forest Hills, NY For-profit · 4-year | $72,162 | 31 † | $24,824 | $19,860 | 1.1 |
| 27 | Montgomery County Community College Blue Bell, PA Public · 2-year | $71,874 | 44 | $13,470 | $11,124 | 0.6 |
| 28 | Delaware Technical Community College-Terry Dover, DE Public · 4-year | $71,788 | 26 † | — | $11,578 | 0.7 |
| 29 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus Cincinnati, OH Public · 4-year | $71,678 | 32 † | $16,590 | $25,648 | 1.4 |
| 30 | Iowa Western Community College Council Bluffs, IA Public · 2-year | $71,502 | 27 † | — | $14,629 | 0.9 |
| 31 | Community College of Rhode Island Warwick, RI Public · 2-year | $71,451 | 31 † | $21,000 | $6,513 | 0.4 |
| 32 | Fox College Tinley Park, IL For-profit · 2-year | $70,930 | 79 | $19,473 | $13,109 | 0.8 |
| 33 | College of DuPage Glen Ellyn, IL Public · 2-year | $70,554 | 27 † | $17,225 | $7,401 | 0.4 |
| 34 | University of New Haven West Haven, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,435 | 53 | $20,500 | $34,192 | 2.1 |
| 35 | CUNY New York City College of Technology Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year | $70,193 | 129 | $10,000 | $5,127 | 0.3 |
| 36 | Community College of Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA Public · 2-year | $69,667 | 47 | $14,500 | $11,911 | 0.7 |
| 37 | Bristol Community College Fall River, MA Public · 2-year | $69,105 | 25 † | — | $5,547 | 0.4 |
| 38 | El Paso Community College El Paso, TX Public · 2-year | $68,246 | 28 † | — | $3,206 | 0.2 |
| 39 | Monroe Community College Rochester, NY Public · 2-year | $67,757 | 40 | $13,501 | $6,353 | 0.4 |
| 40 | Palm Beach State College Lake Worth, FL Public · 4-year | $67,713 | 30 † | — | $9,182 | 0.6 |
| 41 | Allegany College of Maryland Cumberland, MD Public · 2-year | $67,669 | 34 † | — | $8,819 | 0.6 |
| 42 | Missouri Southern State University Joplin, MO Public · 4-year | $67,589 | 50 | $22,143 | $12,007 | 0.7 |
| 43 | Connecticut State Community College New Britain, CT Public · 2-year | $67,572 | 28 † | — | $11,513 | 0.8 |
| 44 | Northampton County Area Community College Bethlehem, PA Public · 2-year | $67,259 | 35 † | $16,000 | $12,119 | 0.8 |
| 45 | SUNY Broome Community College Binghamton, NY Public · 2-year | $66,499 | 52 | $13,393 | $8,940 | 0.6 |
| 46 | Harrisburg Area Community College Harrisburg, PA Public · 2-year | $66,048 | 33 † | — | $14,471 | 1.0 |
| 47 | Harcum College Bryn Mawr, PA Private nonprofit · 2-year | $65,526 | 61 | $19,915 | $24,776 | 1.7 |
| 48 | Georgia State University Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $65,066 | 39 † | — | $15,931 | 1.0 |
| 49 | Midlands Technical College West Columbia, SC Public · 2-year | $64,752 | 33 † | — | $4,647 | 0.3 |
| 50 | Springfield Technical Community College Springfield, MA Public · 2-year | $64,564 | 30 † | $10,884 | $5,662 | 0.5 |
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 Dental Support Services (CIP 5106, 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 98.
- 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 Dental Support Services 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 Jersey | $81,043 | 5 | Eastern International College-Jersey City |
| Maryland | $75,920 | 3 | Community College of Baltimore County |
| Oregon | $74,428 | 3 | Mt Hood Community College |
| Massachusetts | $72,209 | 4 | Cape Cod Community College |
| Connecticut | $72,100 | 4 | University of Bridgeport |
| New York | $71,178 | 10 | New York University |
| Illinois | $70,554 | 5 | Rock Valley College |
| Pennsylvania | $65,526 | 9 | Montgomery County Community College |
| Missouri | $64,394 | 3 | Missouri Southern State University |
| Texas | $63,262 | 4 | El Paso Community College |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
-
Dental Support Services (Bachelor's)
Same major, Bachelor's level
$68,061 national median · 47 schools
-
Nursing (Associate)
$80,813 national median · 512 schools
-
Diagnostic and Treatment Health Professions (Associate)
$65,389 national median · 244 schools
-
Medical Assisting (Associate)
$42,269 national median · 187 schools
-
Health Administration (Associate)
$37,073 national median · 77 schools
-
Health Sciences (General) (Associate)
$51,180 national median · 25 schools
-
Automotive Technology (Associate)
$58,424 national median · 71 schools
-
IT Administration and Management (Associate)
$54,726 national median · 30 schools
All majors College rankings How to read Scorecard earnings data Community college vs. four-year college