Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Education (General) (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Education (General) earn a median of $49,808 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $38,641 and $60,792. We rank the 40 U.S. colleges whose Education (General) programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 5,265 graduates in all. That puts Education (General) at #110 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, in Minnesota, leads at $66,093, 34% above the median ranked school ($49,437). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $46,191 and $54,488, and the lowest earns $38,074, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 19 of the 40 ranked schools (48%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 12 public, 8 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 14 states, with California the most common (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $20,269 a year, against $20,556 across all 40 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $21,500 in federal loans, about 39% 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 4.6 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 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $66,093 | 132 | $18,125 | $16,778 | 2.4 |
| 2 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $65,217 | 88 | $14,159 | $14,091 | 2.3 |
| 3 | Chapman University Orange, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $64,917 | 54 | $21,500 | $46,555 | 6.7 |
| 4 | Monmouth University West Long Branch, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,068 | 110 | $27,000 | $30,988 | 4.8 |
| 5 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $59,775 | 32 † | — | $24,406 | 4.3 |
| 6 | University of Puget Sound Tacoma, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,205 | 29 † | $27,000 | $38,394 | 9.3 |
| 7 | Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,556 | 43 | $27,000 | $24,402 | 6.3 |
| 8 | Merrimack College North Andover, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $55,180 | 63 | $27,000 | $37,927 | 10.7 |
| 9 | Florida Gulf Coast University Fort Myers, FL Public · 4-year | $55,116 | 51 | $18,828 | $12,568 | 2.4 |
| 10 | University of Hawaii-West Oahu Kapolei, HI Public · 4-year | $54,648 | 35 † | $20,000 | $10,327 | 2.3 |
| 11 | University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $54,434 | 75 | $19,500 | $22,182 | 5.1 |
| 12 | University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA Public · 4-year | $54,356 | 243 | $15,863 | $14,251 | 3.3 |
| 13 | Pacific University Forest Grove, OR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $53,333 | 26 † | $27,000 | $35,273 | 8.6 |
| 14 | Southern Connecticut State University New Haven, CT Public · 4-year | $52,659 | 62 | $23,250 | $20,857 | 5.6 |
| 15 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $52,243 | 146 | $26,000 | $19,680 | 4.5 |
| 16 | Empire State University Saratoga Springs, NY Public · 4-year | $50,954 | 95 | $13,183 | $11,676 | 3.1 |
| 17 | Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL Public · 4-year | $50,946 | 92 | $16,869 | $8,752 | 2.1 |
| 18 | University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus Denver, CO Public · 4-year | $50,728 | 43 | $23,635 | $11,900 | 4.7 |
| 19 | Nelson University Waxahachie, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,491 | 62 | $26,500 | $21,662 | 5.5 |
| 20 | Western Governors University Salt Lake City, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $49,646 | 2,116 | $15,546 | $12,548 | 4.5 |
| 21 | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI Public · 4-year | $49,228 | 231 | $28,375 | $15,014 | 5.2 |
| 22 | Grand Valley State University Allendale, MI Public · 4-year | $49,225 | 285 | $28,250 | $16,317 | 4.5 |
| 23 | Flagler College Saint Augustine, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $49,104 | 54 | $22,500 | $30,525 | 8.3 |
| 24 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $48,188 | 37 † | $22,495 | $18,209 | 4.6 |
| 25 | The University of Arizona Global Campus Chandler, AZ Public · 4-year | $47,107 | 247 | $30,599 | — | — |
| 26 | Midland University Fremont, NE Private nonprofit · 4-year | $46,695 | 43 | $27,000 | $26,267 | 10.8 |
| 27 | Kent State University at Kent Kent, OH Public · 4-year | $46,646 | 120 | $25,875 | $20,787 | 7.9 |
| 28 | Fairmont State University Fairmont, WV Public · 4-year | $46,625 | 54 | $18,500 | $9,032 | 2.9 |
| 29 | Heidelberg University Tiffin, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $46,402 | 29 † | $27,000 | $20,556 | 8.0 |
| 30 | Wilmington University New Castle, DE Private nonprofit · 4-year | $46,324 | 43 | $20,125 | $15,644 | 6.4 |
| 31 | John Carroll University University Heights, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,791 | 57 | $27,000 | $28,746 | 11.8 |
| 32 | Salem State University Salem, MA Public · 4-year | $45,568 | 122 | $25,500 | $15,996 | 14.1 |
| 33 | Webster University Saint Louis, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,411 | 27 † | $24,714 | $27,047 | 10.2 |
| 34 | University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Green Bay, WI Public · 4-year | $44,331 | 87 | $19,500 | $13,369 | 7.9 |
| 35 | Wilmington College Wilmington, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $43,077 | 55 | $26,697 | $24,153 | 13.8 |
| 36 | Tusculum University Greeneville, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,927 | 41 | $19,749 | $21,131 | 10.4 |
| 37 | Corban University Salem, OR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,243 | 43 | $26,528 | $28,035 | 21.3 |
| 38 | Saint Louis University Saint Louis, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,112 | 31 † | $27,000 | $24,398 | 13.4 |
| 39 | Harris-Stowe State University Saint Louis, MO Public · 4-year | $40,247 | 27 † | $34,500 | $9,922 | 7.3 |
| 40 | University of Missouri-St Louis Saint Louis, MO Public · 4-year | $38,074 | 35 † | $27,147 | $15,071 | 18.5 |
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 bachelor's degree programs in Education (General) (CIP 1301, 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: 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 Education (General) 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | $55,180 | 3 | Boston University |
| Oregon | $53,333 | 3 | University of Oregon |
| Florida | $50,946 | 3 | Florida Gulf Coast University |
| Ohio | $46,097 | 4 | Kent State University at Kent |
| Missouri | $41,180 | 4 | Webster University |
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