Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Design and Applied Arts (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Design and Applied Arts earn a median of $51,490 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $33,006 and $70,612. We rank the 200 U.S. colleges whose Design and Applied Arts programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 17,385 graduates in all. That puts Design and Applied Arts at #99 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Carnegie Mellon University, in Pennsylvania, leads at $138,588, 159% above the median ranked school ($53,529). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $46,571 and $60,788, and the lowest earns $24,420. 119 of the 200 ranked schools (60%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 9 public, 11 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 12 states, with Massachusetts the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $26,214 a year, against $20,645 across all 200 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $25,000 in federal loans, about 35% 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 2.8 years.
Showing the top 50 of 200 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $138,588 | 41 | $24,500 | $31,944 | 1.3 |
| 2 | Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $95,697 | 43 | $26,354 | $12,116 | 0.8 |
| 3 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $87,358 | 34 † | $25,000 | $36,228 | 2.8 |
| 4 | Northeastern University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $87,336 | 51 | $25,500 | $30,915 | 2.7 |
| 5 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,414 | 27 † | $19,250 | $26,780 | 2.3 |
| 6 | Art Center College of Design Pasadena, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,093 | 273 | $31,000 | $48,661 | 5.0 |
| 7 | Florida State University Tallahassee, FL Public · 4-year | $73,888 | 46 | $22,625 | $11,297 | 1.1 |
| 8 | Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,809 | 26 † | $21,000 | $24,402 | 3.1 |
| 9 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $72,213 | 65 | $23,900 | $24,953 | 2.8 |
| 10 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus Cincinnati, OH Public · 4-year | $71,605 | 205 | $25,500 | $25,648 | 2.9 |
| 11 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $71,527 | 143 | $27,000 | $38,793 | 4.3 |
| 12 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $69,846 | 33 † | $18,000 | $19,857 | 2.3 |
| 13 | Western Washington University Bellingham, WA Public · 4-year | $69,715 | 63 | $19,833 | $21,193 | 2.9 |
| 14 | Washington State University Pullman, WA Public · 4-year | $69,224 | 25 † | $24,604 | $14,971 | 2.1 |
| 15 | Laguna College of Art and Design Laguna Beach, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $68,934 | 73 | $27,000 | $42,505 | 5.3 |
| 16 | Seattle Pacific University Seattle, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $68,547 | 33 † | $25,000 | $24,488 | 3.5 |
| 17 | Wentworth Institute of Technology Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $68,160 | 100 | $27,000 | $34,170 | 5.0 |
| 18 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $68,151 | 55 | $21,694 | $17,339 | 2.2 |
| 19 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $67,981 | 42 | $26,000 | $28,384 | 3.6 |
| 20 | Rhode Island School of Design Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,771 | 199 | $27,000 | $50,507 | 7.4 |
| 21 | Washington University in St Louis St. Louis, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,771 | 33 † | $19,089 | $21,786 | 2.6 |
| 22 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $67,742 | 60 | $26,000 | $17,799 | 2.3 |
| 23 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $66,435 | 205 | $16,500 | $10,440 | 1.4 |
| 24 | Drexel University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,294 | 280 | $27,000 | $38,509 | 5.2 |
| 25 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $66,259 | 46 | $19,000 | $12,548 | 1.7 |
| 26 | Clemson University Clemson, SC Public · 4-year | $66,150 | 91 | $23,250 | $22,253 | 2.8 |
| 27 | Marist University Poughkeepsie, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,010 | 25 † | $26,644 | $41,544 | 5.5 |
| 28 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $65,874 | 32 † | $17,875 | $17,354 | 2.5 |
| 29 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $65,656 | 50 | $19,839 | $6,541 | 0.8 |
| 30 | University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus Norman, OK Public · 4-year | $65,646 | 33 † | $26,250 | $15,300 | 2.0 |
| 31 | University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $65,573 | 41 | $28,000 | $22,182 | 3.1 |
| 32 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $65,186 | 78 | $18,178 | $14,355 | 2.0 |
| 33 | University of Houston Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $64,612 | 49 | $24,000 | $14,276 | 1.9 |
| 34 | Endicott College Beverly, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $64,559 | 55 | $27,000 | $40,654 | 6.9 |
| 35 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $64,175 | 25 † | — | $14,936 | 2.3 |
| 36 | Baylor University Waco, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,522 | 29 † | $25,750 | $41,104 | 5.7 |
| 37 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $62,414 | 141 | $22,500 | $16,778 | 2.7 |
| 38 | Weber State University Ogden, UT Public · 4-year | $62,281 | 28 † | $20,500 | $10,258 | 1.7 |
| 39 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $62,209 | 204 | $14,924 | $14,741 | 2.3 |
| 40 | Woodbury University Burbank, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,092 | 32 † | $27,000 | $33,692 | 5.4 |
| 41 | Metropolitan State University of Denver Denver, CO Public · 4-year | $61,654 | 50 | $28,500 | $15,327 | 2.9 |
| 42 | High Point University High Point, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,635 | 60 | — | $38,707 | 5.6 |
| 43 | Illinois State University Normal, IL Public · 4-year | $61,628 | 32 † | $24,375 | $19,398 | 3.0 |
| 44 | Auburn University Auburn, AL Public · 4-year | $61,609 | 95 | $25,125 | $24,323 | 3.3 |
| 45 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $61,539 | 160 | $23,000 | $16,805 | 2.5 |
| 46 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $61,382 | 85 | $19,500 | $17,303 | 2.5 |
| 47 | College for Creative Studies Detroit, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,222 | 228 | $26,000 | $34,617 | 5.2 |
| 48 | Bradley University Peoria, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,888 | 25 † | — | $22,719 | 3.7 |
| 49 | Fashion Institute of Technology New York, NY Public · 4-year | $60,882 | 647 | $23,033 | $19,095 | 3.0 |
| 50 | The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga Chattanooga, TN Public · 4-year | $60,807 | 27 † | $25,000 | $14,265 | 2.2 |
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 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 200.
- 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 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Washington | $68,886 | 4 | Western Washington University |
| Illinois | $60,038 | 6 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| Utah | $59,005 | 4 | Utah State University |
| Oregon | $58,296 | 4 | University of Oregon |
| Texas | $57,753 | 9 | The University of Texas at Austin |
| Oklahoma | $56,958 | 3 | University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus |
| Indiana | $56,774 | 4 | University of Notre Dame |
| Massachusetts | $56,008 | 10 | Northeastern University |
| California | $55,818 | 20 | Art Center College of Design |
| North Carolina | $55,394 | 7 | High Point University |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
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Design and Applied Arts (Associate)
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Theatre Arts (Bachelor's)
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Film and Photography (Bachelor's)
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Visual and Performing Arts (General) (Bachelor's)
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$48,240 national median · 29 schools
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Dance (Bachelor's)
$39,980 national median · 23 schools
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