Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Foods and Nutrition Studies (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Foods and Nutrition Studies earn a median of $54,945 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $39,143 and $70,678. We rank the 35 U.S. colleges whose Foods and Nutrition Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 3,334 graduates in all. That puts Foods and Nutrition Studies at #89 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, in Virginia, leads at $74,005, 33% above the median ranked school ($55,747). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $51,765 and $59,352, and the lowest earns $46,674, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 21 of the 35 ranked schools (60%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 19 public, 1 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 91% are public. The top 20 are spread across 15 states, with Texas the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $18,325 a year, against $16,805 across all 35 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $22,996 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 3.1 years.
Showing the top 35 of 35 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $74,005 | 172 | $24,017 | $24,953 | 2.7 |
| 2 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $68,084 | 27 † | $25,250 | $17,799 | 2.3 |
| 3 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $64,105 | 110 | $19,940 | $19,857 | 2.7 |
| 4 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus Stillwater, OK Public · 4-year | $61,369 | 89 | $18,500 | $17,447 | 2.6 |
| 5 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE Public · 4-year | $61,092 | 132 | $23,865 | $17,747 | 2.9 |
| 6 | University of Idaho Moscow, ID Public · 4-year | $60,241 | 30 † | $23,000 | $14,831 | 2.5 |
| 7 | Montclair State University Montclair, NJ Public · 4-year | $59,866 | 175 | $22,616 | $15,566 | 2.7 |
| 8 | CUNY Hunter College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $59,864 | 37 † | — | $2,984 | 0.5 |
| 9 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $59,501 | 29 † | $16,375 | $23,322 | 4.1 |
| 10 | Framingham State University Framingham, MA Public · 4-year | $59,202 | 64 | $23,125 | $16,114 | 3.5 |
| 11 | Oregon State University Corvallis, OR Public · 4-year | $59,184 | 45 | $22,992 | $19,604 | 3.5 |
| 12 | Wayne State University Detroit, MI Public · 4-year | $58,871 | 51 | $20,568 | $12,766 | 2.1 |
| 13 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $58,156 | 44 | — | $21,315 | 3.7 |
| 14 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $58,038 | 51 | $26,750 | $38,793 | 7.0 |
| 15 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $57,859 | 62 | $22,000 | $17,339 | 3.2 |
| 16 | Stephen F Austin State University Nacogdoches, TX Public · 4-year | $57,742 | 25 † | $24,250 | $14,260 | 2.5 |
| 17 | The University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, AL Public · 4-year | $57,002 | 134 | $23,719 | $22,420 | 3.6 |
| 18 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $55,747 | 58 | $22,500 | $20,268 | 3.9 |
| 19 | Ohio University-Main Campus Athens, OH Public · 4-year | $55,659 | 79 | $24,780 | $21,637 | 4.4 |
| 20 | University of Kentucky Lexington, KY Public · 4-year | $55,633 | 70 | $20,000 | $18,851 | 3.7 |
| 21 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $55,275 | 73 | $21,250 | $18,209 | 3.2 |
| 22 | Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN Public · 4-year | $54,070 | 40 | $18,344 | $13,359 | 2.8 |
| 23 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $53,318 | 229 | $21,583 | $14,967 | 3.6 |
| 24 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $52,836 | 115 | $22,500 | $16,805 | 3.7 |
| 25 | Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA Public · 4-year | $52,115 | 68 | $27,000 | $16,804 | 4.3 |
| 26 | Georgia Southern University Statesboro, GA Public · 4-year | $52,038 | 30 † | — | $15,267 | 3.4 |
| 27 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $51,491 | 71 | $17,375 | $14,480 | 4.0 |
| 28 | Johnson & Wales University-Providence Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,571 | 910 | $27,000 | $31,027 | 12.2 |
| 29 | Sam Houston State University Huntsville, TX Public · 4-year | $50,512 | 29 † | — | $16,404 | 4.2 |
| 30 | University of Houston Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $49,724 | 126 | $18,475 | $14,276 | 3.8 |
| 31 | Winthrop University Rock Hill, SC Public · 4-year | $48,702 | 26 † | $23,750 | $15,343 | 4.4 |
| 32 | University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR Public · 4-year | $48,556 | 37 † | $18,775 | $16,511 | 4.1 |
| 33 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $48,270 | 39 † | $9,091 | $14,936 | 6.2 |
| 34 | Benedictine University Lisle, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $46,788 | 32 † | $23,000 | $22,313 | 8.3 |
| 35 | University of New Mexico-Main Campus Albuquerque, NM Public · 4-year | $46,674 | 25 † | $22,875 | $15,489 | 4.3 |
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 Foods and Nutrition Studies (CIP 1905, 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 35.
- 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 Foods and Nutrition Studies 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | $55,289 | 6 | The University of Texas at Austin |
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