Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Design and Applied Arts (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Design and Applied Arts earn a median of $38,127 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $22,789 and $53,862. We rank the 40 U.S. colleges whose Design and Applied Arts programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,529 graduates in all. That puts Design and Applied Arts at #24 of 27 associate degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
The New School, in New York, leads at $66,896, 70% above the median ranked school ($39,379). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $34,951 and $43,947, and the lowest earns $26,557. 22 of the 40 ranked schools (55%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 16 public, 2 private nonprofit and 2 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 75% are public. New York places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of Washington (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $9,862 a year, against $9,862 across all 40 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $11,753 in federal loans, about 27% 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 3.8 years.
Showing the top 40 of 40 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | The New School New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,896 | 81 | $14,750 | $58,741 | 3.8 |
| 2 | Portland Community College Portland, OR Public · 2-year | $50,811 | 38 † | $17,506 | $10,405 | 1.5 |
| 3 | College of DuPage Glen Ellyn, IL Public · 2-year | $50,264 | 28 † | $11,750 | $7,401 | 1.0 |
| 4 | CUNY New York City College of Technology Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year | $48,833 | 25 † | — | $5,127 | 0.8 |
| 5 | Johnson County Community College Overland Park, KS Public · 2-year | $48,084 | 53 | $9,341 | $14,176 | 2.1 |
| 6 | Central Piedmont Community College Charlotte, NC Public · 2-year | $47,967 | 41 | — | $3,345 | 0.5 |
| 7 | Fashion Institute of Technology New York, NY Public · 4-year | $45,096 | 727 | $11,640 | $19,095 | 4.1 |
| 8 | CUNY LaGuardia Community College Long Island City, NY Public · 2-year | $44,831 | 40 | — | $6,120 | 1.3 |
| 9 | New England Institute of Technology East Greenwich, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $44,313 | 113 | $12,000 | $36,483 | 18.8 |
| 10 | Alexandria Technical & Community College Alexandria, MN Public · 2-year | $44,165 | 37 † | $12,000 | $13,691 | 4.3 |
| 11 | Saint Louis Community College Bridgeton, MO Public · 4-year | $43,874 | 44 | — | $8,440 | 1.9 |
| 12 | Seattle Central College Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $43,416 | 29 † | $11,500 | $8,819 | 6.3 |
| 13 | Metropolitan Community College Area Omaha, NE Public · 2-year | $42,343 | 53 | $8,831 | $4,982 | 1.9 |
| 14 | Spokane Falls Community College Spokane, WA Public · 4-year | $42,113 | 50 | $11,756 | $7,409 | — |
| 15 | Austin Community College District Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $41,552 | 38 † | $19,939 | $6,390 | 1.9 |
| 16 | Northampton County Area Community College Bethlehem, PA Public · 2-year | $41,282 | 26 † | — | $12,119 | 5.1 |
| 17 | Northern Virginia Community College Annandale, VA Public · 2-year | $41,159 | 25 † | — | $9,919 | 4.4 |
| 18 | Salt Lake Community College Salt Lake City, UT Public · 2-year | $40,740 | 37 † | $10,088 | $9,804 | 9.0 |
| 19 | Academy of Art University San Francisco, CA For-profit · 4-year | $40,595 | 29 † | $31,937 | $40,613 | 22.4 |
| 20 | The Modern College of Design Kettering, OH For-profit · 4-year | $39,430 | 112 | $5,500 | $39,359 | 23.5 |
| 21 | Monroe Community College Rochester, NY Public · 2-year | $39,328 | 83 | $8,000 | $6,353 | 3.5 |
| 22 | Full Sail University Winter Park, FL For-profit · 4-year | $38,716 | 91 | $24,392 | $38,875 | 17.8 |
| 23 | Nassau Community College Garden City, NY Public · 2-year | $37,466 | 37 † | — | $7,095 | — |
| 24 | Mohawk Valley Community College Utica, NY Public · 2-year | $37,280 | 45 | $9,534 | $8,987 | — |
| 25 | Macomb Community College Warren, MI Public · 2-year | $37,216 | 53 | $9,850 | $1,618 | 1.3 |
| 26 | Suffolk County Community College Selden, NY Public · 2-year | $37,147 | 25 † | $8,906 | $5,258 | — |
| 27 | College of Southern Nevada Las Vegas, NV Public · 4-year | $37,133 | 44 | — | $6,615 | — |
| 28 | Chattanooga State Community College Chattanooga, TN Public · 2-year | $36,691 | 35 † | $9,288 | $5,283 | — |
| 29 | Harrisburg Area Community College Harrisburg, PA Public · 2-year | $35,131 | 31 † | $16,417 | $14,471 | — |
| 30 | Roosevelt University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $35,066 | 33 † | $13,417 | $20,194 | — |
| 31 | Bryant & Stratton College-Buffalo Buffalo, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $34,606 | 34 † | $15,417 | $14,135 | — |
| 32 | Springfield Technical Community College Springfield, MA Public · 2-year | $34,598 | 29 † | — | $5,662 | — |
| 33 | Connecticut State Community College New Britain, CT Public · 2-year | $34,324 | 56 | — | $11,513 | — |
| 34 | Vet Tech Institute of Indiana Indianapolis, IN For-profit · 2-year | $34,242 | 39 † | $10,143 | $16,045 | — |
| 35 | Guilford Technical Community College Jamestown, NC Public · 2-year | $33,521 | 32 † | $11,708 | $15,002 | — |
| 36 | CUNY Hostos Community College Bronx, NY Public · 2-year | $30,848 | 38 † | — | $5,297 | — |
| 37 | CUNY Kingsborough Community College Brooklyn, NY Public · 2-year | $30,135 | 56 | — | $5,606 | — |
| 38 | Keiser University-Ft Lauderdale Fort Lauderdale, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $29,280 | 51 | $24,486 | $30,498 | — |
| 39 | Tidewater Community College Norfolk, VA Public · 2-year | $28,976 | 55 | $11,348 | $11,762 | — |
| 40 | Pratt Institute-Main Brooklyn, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $26,557 | 36 † | $12,000 | $52,659 | — |
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 Design and Applied Arts (CIP 5004, 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 40.
- 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 Design and Applied 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 | $37,373 | 12 | The New School |
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Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
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$34,184 national median · 25 schools
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