Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Health Administration (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Health Administration earn a median of $37,073 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $23,345 and $49,261. We rank the 77 U.S. colleges whose Health Administration programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 12,836 graduates in all. That puts Health Administration at #26 of 27 associate degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Santa Barbara City College, in California, leads at $71,351, 70% above the median ranked school ($41,911). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $36,905 and $46,503, and the lowest earns $28,245. 56 of the 77 ranked schools (73%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 13 public, 6 private nonprofit and 1 for-profit. New York places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (2).
The top 20 schools cost less than most: a median net price of $10,860 a year, against $13,157 across all 77 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,000 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 1.5 years.
Showing the top 50 of 77 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Santa Barbara City College Santa Barbara, CA Public · 2-year | $71,351 | 28 † | — | $11,315 | 0.7 |
| 2 | Fisher College Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,147 | 27 † | $17,017 | $26,649 | 2.4 |
| 3 | Southern New Hampshire University Manchester, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,385 | 68 | $9,500 | $36,708 | 5.1 |
| 4 | The College of Westchester White Plains, NY For-profit · 4-year | $54,945 | 50 | $25,250 | $16,296 | 1.7 |
| 5 | Portland Community College Portland, OR Public · 2-year | $54,279 | 46 | $20,000 | $10,405 | 1.2 |
| 6 | Peirce College Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $54,019 | 34 † | $31,721 | $12,148 | 1.4 |
| 7 | CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College New York, NY Public · 2-year | $53,128 | 34 † | — | $4,976 | 0.6 |
| 8 | St Petersburg College St. Petersburg, FL Public · 4-year | $53,014 | 40 | $27,644 | $1,471 | 0.2 |
| 9 | Rochester Community and Technical College Rochester, MN Public · 2-year | $52,623 | 40 | $21,125 | $14,435 | 2.0 |
| 10 | Erie Community College Buffalo, NY Public · 2-year | $50,996 | 29 † | — | $7,765 | 1.0 |
| 11 | SUNY College of Technology at Alfred Alfred, NY Public · 4-year | $50,971 | 25 † | $20,000 | $15,016 | 2.0 |
| 12 | Colorado Christian University Lakewood, CO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,281 | 31 † | $30,129 | $29,500 | 6.1 |
| 13 | Davenport University Grand Rapids, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $49,901 | 59 | $30,178 | $17,707 | 2.3 |
| 14 | Schoolcraft Community College District Livonia, MI Public · 4-year | $49,283 | 28 † | $14,912 | $2,260 | 0.3 |
| 15 | Nassau Community College Garden City, NY Public · 2-year | $48,643 | 50 | — | $7,095 | 1.1 |
| 16 | Indiana Institute of Technology Fort Wayne, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,576 | 28 † | $24,666 | $23,206 | 3.8 |
| 17 | Spokane Community College Spokane, WA Public · 4-year | $48,371 | 42 | $17,862 | $5,473 | 1.4 |
| 18 | North Shore Community College Danvers, MA Public · 2-year | $47,778 | 72 | $8,750 | $9,000 | 2.7 |
| 19 | Tacoma Community College Tacoma, WA Public · 4-year | $47,504 | 28 † | — | $8,376 | 2.4 |
| 20 | Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City Oklahoma City, OK Public · 4-year | $46,503 | 46 | $14,664 | $7,081 | 1.2 |
| 21 | Monroe University Bronx, NY For-profit · 4-year | $45,965 | 133 | $15,496 | $14,522 | 2.8 |
| 22 | Harrisburg Area Community College Harrisburg, PA Public · 2-year | $45,936 | 56 | $24,514 | $14,471 | 3.1 |
| 23 | Metropolitan Community College Area Omaha, NE Public · 2-year | $45,781 | 33 † | — | $4,982 | 1.1 |
| 24 | Springfield Technical Community College Springfield, MA Public · 2-year | $45,519 | 32 † | — | $5,662 | 2.5 |
| 25 | Tidewater Community College Norfolk, VA Public · 2-year | $45,431 | 26 † | — | $11,762 | 2.7 |
| 26 | Beal University Bangor, ME For-profit · 4-year | $45,283 | 32 † | $16,790 | $40,109 | 11.0 |
| 27 | Plaza College Forest Hills, NY For-profit · 4-year | $45,157 | 37 † | $19,458 | $19,860 | 4.2 |
| 28 | Lehigh Carbon Community College Schnecksville, PA Public · 2-year | $45,023 | 28 † | $12,770 | $9,203 | 2.2 |
| 29 | Minnesota State Community and Technical College Fergus Falls, MN Public · 2-year | $44,794 | 54 | $21,000 | $12,556 | 3.6 |
| 30 | Clark College Vancouver, WA Public · 4-year | $44,211 | 40 | $21,000 | $11,465 | 6.4 |
| 31 | Ferris State University Big Rapids, MI Public · 4-year | $43,828 | 33 † | $24,950 | $8,624 | 1.9 |
| 32 | Berkeley College-New York New York, NY For-profit · 4-year | $43,748 | 83 | $24,250 | $34,124 | 8.5 |
| 33 | Kirkwood Community College Cedar Rapids, IA Public · 2-year | $43,732 | 26 † | $27,394 | $9,705 | 2.9 |
| 34 | Berkeley College-Woodland Park Woodland Park, NJ For-profit · 4-year | $43,322 | 59 | $23,218 | $27,100 | 8.5 |
| 35 | ECPI University Virginia Beach, VA For-profit · 4-year | $43,150 | 33 † | $18,057 | $22,965 | 7.0 |
| 36 | Brookline College-Phoenix Phoenix, AZ For-profit · 4-year | $42,841 | 40 | $18,058 | $30,072 | 9.5 |
| 37 | Forsyth Technical Community College Winston-Salem, NC Public · 2-year | $42,789 | 40 | $20,000 | $7,200 | 1.6 |
| 38 | Mandl School-The College of Allied Health New York, NY For-profit · 2-year | $42,104 | 27 † | $19,025 | $35,578 | 11.2 |
| 39 | Central Piedmont Community College Charlotte, NC Public · 2-year | $41,911 | 43 | — | $3,345 | 0.9 |
| 40 | Northampton County Area Community College Bethlehem, PA Public · 2-year | $41,577 | 28 † | $22,200 | $12,119 | 4.8 |
| 41 | Pennsylvania College of Technology Williamsport, PA Public · 4-year | $41,454 | 25 † | $22,083 | $25,110 | 10.1 |
| 42 | San Jacinto Community College Pasadena, TX Public · 4-year | $41,445 | 61 | $9,375 | $12,143 | 3.7 |
| 43 | Asher College Sacramento, CA For-profit · 2-year | $41,299 | 52 | $14,862 | $35,499 | 16.4 |
| 44 | Butte College Oroville, CA Public · 2-year | $41,109 | 28 † | — | $5,520 | 2.7 |
| 45 | Tyler Junior College Tyler, TX Public · 4-year | $40,997 | 47 | $19,240 | $10,206 | 3.3 |
| 46 | Hinds Community College Raymond, MS Public · 2-year | $40,973 | 41 | $19,000 | $4,060 | 0.8 |
| 47 | University of Northwestern Ohio Lima, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $40,653 | 37 † | $21,922 | $21,807 | 9.5 |
| 48 | Ridgewater College Willmar, MN Public · 2-year | $40,575 | 32 † | $22,399 | $10,046 | 7.3 |
| 49 | Baker College Owosso, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $40,535 | 159 | $20,000 | $13,157 | 4.6 |
| 50 | Columbia Southern University Orange Beach, AL For-profit · 4-year | $40,382 | 80 | $15,886 | $14,580 | 3.6 |
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 associate degree programs in Health Administration (CIP 5107, 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 77.
- 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: 2 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 Health Administration 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 | $47,778 | 3 | Fisher College |
| Washington | $47,504 | 3 | Spokane Community College |
| New York | $47,304 | 10 | The College of Westchester |
| Michigan | $46,556 | 4 | Davenport University |
| Pennsylvania | $45,023 | 5 | Peirce College |
| Minnesota | $44,794 | 3 | Rochester Community and Technical College |
| Virginia | $43,150 | 3 | Tidewater Community College |
| California | $41,204 | 4 | Santa Barbara City College |
| Texas | $40,997 | 3 | San Jacinto Community College |
| Arizona | $38,665 | 3 | Brookline College-Phoenix |
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