Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Graphic Communications (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Graphic Communications earn a median of $43,283 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $27,166 and $64,326. We rank the 40 U.S. colleges whose Graphic Communications programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,499 graduates in all. That puts Graphic Communications at #125 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, in California, leads at $79,432, 83% above the median ranked school ($43,402). The gap between schools is wide: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $35,030 and $51,083, and the lowest earns $29,565, so for this major the school you graduate from matters a lot. 20 of the 40 ranked schools (50%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 10 public, 7 private nonprofit and 3 for-profit. California places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Illinois (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $23,043 a year, against $25,154 across all 40 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $26,338 in federal loans, about 51% 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 6.1 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 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $79,432 | 75 | $17,961 | $16,665 | 1.6 |
| 2 | Ringling College of Art and Design Sarasota, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,213 | 78 | $27,000 | $57,742 | 5.7 |
| 3 | University of Minnesota-Duluth Duluth, MN Public · 4-year | $61,062 | 44 | $24,500 | $18,743 | 3.2 |
| 4 | University of Wisconsin-Stout Menomonie, WI Public · 4-year | $59,621 | 35 † | $23,290 | $17,490 | 3.2 |
| 5 | University of Maryland Global Campus Adelphi, MD Public · 4-year | $58,759 | 38 † | $22,971 | $22,063 | 4.2 |
| 6 | University of California-Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA Public · 4-year | $58,163 | 31 † | $20,411 | $17,890 | 3.4 |
| 7 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $57,618 | 118 | $18,964 | $14,967 | 2.8 |
| 8 | Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $55,122 | 49 | $27,000 | $34,906 | 7.2 |
| 9 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus Bowling Green, OH Public · 4-year | $52,388 | 101 | $26,338 | $24,022 | 5.9 |
| 10 | California Baptist University Riverside, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,834 | 34 † | — | $26,285 | 7.1 |
| 11 | Academy of Art University San Francisco, CA For-profit · 4-year | $50,833 | 107 | $31,125 | $40,613 | 11.7 |
| 12 | University of Silicon Valley San Jose, CA For-profit · 4-year | $49,968 | 65 | $31,000 | $27,815 | 8.6 |
| 13 | University of Idaho Moscow, ID Public · 4-year | $49,188 | 26 † | $26,958 | $14,831 | 4.7 |
| 14 | George Mason University Fairfax, VA Public · 4-year | $47,440 | 55 | $22,985 | $17,915 | 6.6 |
| 15 | Carroll University Waukesha, WI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $47,327 | 33 † | $27,000 | $15,193 | 6.2 |
| 16 | DigiPen Institute of Technology Redmond, WA For-profit · 4-year | $45,571 | 64 | $27,000 | $44,446 | 35.8 |
| 17 | DePaul University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,028 | 46 | $25,000 | $30,902 | 13.8 |
| 18 | Ferris State University Big Rapids, MI Public · 4-year | $44,116 | 92 | $27,000 | $8,624 | 3.7 |
| 19 | Columbia College Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $43,970 | 59 | $20,000 | $26,598 | 13.5 |
| 20 | Minneapolis College of Art and Design Minneapolis, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $43,745 | 32 † | $27,000 | $29,926 | 20.3 |
| 21 | Savannah College of Art and Design Savannah, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $43,058 | 385 | $25,300 | $49,430 | 21.4 |
| 22 | Sam Houston State University Huntsville, TX Public · 4-year | $42,579 | 36 † | $24,500 | $16,404 | 8.4 |
| 23 | Eastern Michigan University Ypsilanti, MI Public · 4-year | $42,490 | 47 | $27,000 | $15,407 | 8.0 |
| 24 | East Tennessee State University Johnson City, TN Public · 4-year | $41,074 | 54 | $22,250 | $15,983 | 10.2 |
| 25 | Laguna College of Art and Design Laguna Beach, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $38,850 | 30 † | $27,000 | $42,505 | — |
| 26 | Bradley University Peoria, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $37,657 | 42 | $27,000 | $22,719 | — |
| 27 | Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design Lakewood, CO For-profit · 4-year | $37,239 | 33 † | $28,115 | $32,363 | — |
| 28 | Lynn University Boca Raton, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $36,590 | 31 † | $12,997 | $44,089 | 78.7 |
| 29 | University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI Public · 4-year | $35,830 | 33 † | $21,125 | $15,664 | — |
| 30 | Pratt Institute-Main Brooklyn, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $35,100 | 58 | $26,000 | $52,659 | — |
| 31 | Full Sail University Winter Park, FL For-profit · 4-year | $34,818 | 106 | — | $38,875 | — |
| 32 | Huntington University Huntington, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $34,787 | 29 † | $27,000 | $19,310 | — |
| 33 | Indian River State College Fort Pierce, FL Public · 4-year | $34,741 | 44 | — | $3,815 | — |
| 34 | Los Angeles Film School Hollywood, CA For-profit · 4-year | $34,138 | 42 | $33,250 | $30,980 | — |
| 35 | College for Creative Studies Detroit, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $34,003 | 79 | $27,000 | $34,617 | — |
| 36 | New Mexico State University-Main Campus Las Cruces, NM Public · 4-year | $33,612 | 36 † | $22,500 | $8,889 | — |
| 37 | Columbus College of Art & Design Columbus, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $33,389 | 55 | $27,000 | $29,439 | — |
| 38 | California College of the Arts San Francisco, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $31,068 | 45 | $26,899 | $53,909 | — |
| 39 | School of Visual Arts New York, NY For-profit · 4-year | $30,125 | 105 | $27,000 | $57,914 | — |
| 40 | Regent University Virginia Beach, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $29,565 | 27 † | $25,750 | $19,923 | — |
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 Graphic Communications (CIP 1003, 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 Graphic Communications 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $50,401 | 8 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo |
| Illinois | $43,970 | 3 | DePaul University |
| Michigan | $42,490 | 3 | Ferris State University |
| Florida | $35,704 | 4 | Ringling College of Art and Design |
| New York | $35,100 | 3 | Rochester Institute of Technology |
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