Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing

Highest-Paying Colleges for Ethnic and Gender Studies (Bachelor's)

Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Ethnic and Gender Studies earn a median of $51,710 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $34,946 and $68,128. We rank the 49 U.S. colleges whose Ethnic and Gender Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,845 graduates in all. That puts Ethnic and Gender Studies at #98 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.

University of California-Berkeley, in California, leads at $67,291, 26% above the median ranked school ($53,319). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $47,880 and $56,188, and the lowest earns $35,081, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 26 of the 49 ranked schools (53%) match or beat the national median.

Public universities dominate the top 20: 18 public, 2 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 92% are public. California places 11 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 $14,523 a year, against $14,967 across all 49 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $16,190 in federal loans, about 28% 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 2.9 years.

Showing the top 49 of 49 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.

Ranking table: Highest-Paying Colleges for Ethnic and Gender Studies (Bachelor's)

1	University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year	$67,291	68	$15,076	$13,481	1.8
2	Sonoma State University Rohnert Park, CA Public · 4-year	$64,116	42	$19,187	$12,885	1.9
3	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year	$63,426	60	$14,802	$13,138	1.8
4	University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year	$61,443	39 †	$24,411	$17,799	2.9
5	San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year	$59,990	109	$17,303	$12,278	2.1
6	University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year	$59,004	89	$13,250	$16,109	2.9
7	University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year	$58,670	189	$14,000	$14,741	2.7
8	University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year	$57,646	43	$14,100	$21,565	4.1
9	University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year	$57,534	62	$12,551	$14,091	3.3
10	The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year	$57,292	33 †	$24,353	$19,857	3.5
11	CUNY Lehman College Bronx, NY Public · 4-year	$56,907	33 †	$14,657	$3,148	0.6
12	University of California-Riverside Riverside, CA Public · 4-year	$56,555	54	$22,305	$14,304	2.9
13	California State University-Sacramento Sacramento, CA Public · 4-year	$56,188	64	$15,000	$9,338	1.9
14	CUNY Brooklyn College Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year	$56,138	90	$8,625	$3,103	0.6
15	University of California-Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA Public · 4-year	$55,798	123	$19,500	$17,890	3.8
16	Columbia University in the City of New York New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year	$55,472	26 †	$19,500	$21,590	4.4
17	San Diego State University San Diego, CA Public · 4-year	$55,230	47	$23,080	$15,364	3.4
18	Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year	$55,164	71	$26,000	$24,406	5.4
19	University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year	$55,088	290	$14,820	$12,548	2.8
20	Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$54,897	25 †	$23,105	$48,381	10.8
21	University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC Public · 4-year	$54,798	38 †	$27,750	$15,435	3.0
22	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year	$54,691	47	$11,364	$11,655	2.3
23	University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year	$54,057	39 †	$25,000	$22,182	5.2
24	University of Massachusetts-Boston Boston, MA Public · 4-year	$53,509	33 †	$27,000	$17,707	5.7
25	University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year	$53,319	33 †	$24,237	$12,470	3.1
26	University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year	$51,791	53	$22,692	$6,541	1.5
27	CUNY Hunter College New York, NY Public · 4-year	$51,569	25 †	—	$2,984	0.8
28	University at Albany Albany, NY Public · 4-year	$51,565	49	$24,547	$17,167	4.3
29	Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year	$51,565	28 †	$20,500	$14,967	4.0
30	California State University-Northridge Northridge, CA Public · 4-year	$50,708	217	$15,000	$7,021	2.0
31	California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year	$50,453	70	$12,337	$10,440	3.1
32	Towson University Towson, MD Public · 4-year	$50,406	33 †	$18,618	$17,413	5.4
33	University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year	$49,305	47	$20,500	$16,778	5.9
34	University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year	$48,934	37 †	$19,254	$17,354	6.1
35	University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year	$48,810	29 †	$24,711	$25,097	9.0
36	CUNY City College New York, NY Public · 4-year	$48,637	45	$20,739	$3,776	1.2
37	University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI Public · 4-year	$47,880	42	$18,681	$15,664	5.7
38	University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA Public · 4-year	$47,471	33 †	$18,998	$14,251	5.4
39	California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA Public · 4-year	$46,384	38 †	$19,500	$6,555	2.8
40	Smith College Northampton, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$46,136	31 †	$18,259	$27,579	21.7
41	University of South Florida Tampa, FL Public · 4-year	$46,115	28 †	—	$9,812	3.3
42	University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, NC Public · 4-year	$45,294	35 †	$25,500	$10,965	3.9
43	University of Illinois Chicago Chicago, IL Public · 4-year	$45,253	28 †	$16,500	$10,974	4.8
44	University of New Mexico-Main Campus Albuquerque, NM Public · 4-year	$45,139	36 †	$20,895	$15,489	4.8
45	Aurora University Aurora, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year	$44,786	27 †	—	$18,838	8.7
46	University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI Public · 4-year	$42,435	56	$26,000	$15,014	12.3
47	Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA Public · 4-year	$42,233	40	$25,998	$23,433	16.7
48	Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year	$40,713	34 †	$21,563	$17,339	15.0
49	Haskell Indian Nations University Lawrence, KS Public · 4-year	$35,081	37 †	—	$3,134	—

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 Ethnic and Gender Studies (CIP 0502, 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 49.
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.

Read the full methodology

Top states for Ethnic and Gender Studies earnings

Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.

Median graduate earnings by state for Ethnic and Gender Studies
State	Median earnings	Ranked schools	Top school
California	$55,514	16	University of California-Berkeley
North Carolina	$54,691	3	University of North Carolina at Charlotte
New York	$53,521	6	CUNY Lehman College

Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.

Highest-paying majors

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Highest-Paying Colleges for Ethnic and Gender Studies (Bachelor's)

How this ranking is built

Top states for Ethnic and Gender Studies earnings

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