Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for History (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in History earn a median of $50,680 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $36,330 and $66,736. We rank the 286 U.S. colleges whose History programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 15,580 graduates in all. That puts History at #103 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Duke University, in North Carolina, leads at $112,377, 115% above the median ranked school ($52,320). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $47,430 and $56,771, and the lowest earns $38,565, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 162 of the 286 ranked schools (57%) match or beat the national median.
Private nonprofit colleges dominate the top 20: 16 private nonprofit, 4 public and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 84% are public. New York places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $26,234 a year, against $16,404 across all 286 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $18,375 in federal loans, about 25% 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 2.5 years.
Showing the top 50 of 286 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Duke University Durham, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,377 | 25 † | $13,000 | $29,612 | 1.5 |
| 2 | Yale University New Haven, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $109,947 | 33 † | $8,250 | $23,777 | 1.3 |
| 3 | Columbia University in the City of New York New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,079 | 51 | $21,500 | $21,590 | 1.4 |
| 4 | University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,517 | 27 † | $10,000 | $28,699 | 2.2 |
| 5 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,031 | 28 † | $17,110 | $28,690 | 2.5 |
| 6 | Princeton University Princeton, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $80,347 | 33 † | — | $6,128 | 0.6 |
| 7 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $80,073 | 49 | $18,997 | $41,704 | 4.3 |
| 8 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,940 | 53 | $12,138 | $32,740 | 3.0 |
| 9 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $74,545 | 41 | $18,875 | $37,050 | 3.8 |
| 10 | Virginia Military Institute Lexington, VA Public · 4-year | $72,630 | 27 † | $19,500 | $17,113 | 1.9 |
| 11 | College of the Holy Cross Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,423 | 50 | $27,000 | $38,782 | 4.9 |
| 12 | Fordham University Bronx, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,389 | 42 | $26,000 | $44,338 | 4.8 |
| 13 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $71,187 | 85 | $18,250 | $21,565 | 2.5 |
| 14 | George Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,734 | 41 | $23,250 | $36,586 | 4.8 |
| 15 | Harvard University Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,679 | 53 | $12,721 | $19,066 | 2.6 |
| 16 | Emory University Atlanta, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,988 | 26 † | $21,000 | $22,585 | 2.5 |
| 17 | Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,820 | 26 † | $16,514 | $15,846 | 1.8 |
| 18 | University of Scranton Scranton, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $68,443 | 27 † | $22,375 | $32,568 | 4.1 |
| 19 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $66,518 | 44 | $15,833 | $16,665 | 2.3 |
| 20 | Binghamton University Vestal, NY Public · 4-year | $65,984 | 77 | $18,375 | $21,620 | 2.9 |
| 21 | Tufts University Medford, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $65,540 | 28 † | $15,500 | $39,998 | 6.5 |
| 22 | California State University-East Bay Hayward, CA Public · 4-year | $65,217 | 32 † | $20,000 | $9,320 | 1.3 |
| 23 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $64,871 | 50 | $24,250 | $38,793 | 5.3 |
| 24 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $64,755 | 89 | $13,034 | $13,481 | 1.9 |
| 25 | Monmouth University West Long Branch, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,947 | 30 † | $27,000 | $30,988 | 4.6 |
| 26 | William & Mary Williamsburg, VA Public · 4-year | $63,632 | 59 | $15,000 | $19,096 | 2.8 |
| 27 | Mount Saint Mary College Newburgh, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,174 | 31 † | $26,999 | $25,522 | 3.7 |
| 28 | College of Staten Island CUNY Staten Island, NY Public · 4-year | $63,071 | 30 † | $17,354 | $5,579 | 0.8 |
| 29 | Barnard College New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,258 | 26 † | $16,350 | $28,800 | 4.3 |
| 30 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $62,077 | 93 | $19,096 | $13,138 | 1.9 |
| 31 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $61,745 | 49 | $16,756 | $12,470 | 2.0 |
| 32 | CUNY Lehman College Bronx, NY Public · 4-year | $61,512 | 30 † | $12,897 | $3,148 | 0.5 |
| 33 | The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX Public · 4-year | $61,321 | 39 † | $19,125 | $18,267 | 2.8 |
| 34 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $61,059 | 77 | $15,000 | $14,091 | 2.8 |
| 35 | University of California-Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA Public · 4-year | $60,519 | 82 | $18,100 | $17,890 | 3.0 |
| 36 | Kean University Union, NJ Public · 4-year | $60,236 | 86 | $22,158 | $12,447 | 2.1 |
| 37 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $60,089 | 58 | $21,026 | $15,678 | 2.8 |
| 38 | Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,986 | 27 † | $25,996 | $24,402 | 5.2 |
| 39 | Siena University Loudonville, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,855 | 25 † | $27,000 | $33,733 | 5.6 |
| 40 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $59,819 | 52 | $20,499 | $24,953 | 4.3 |
| 41 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $59,793 | 74 | $30,321 | $9,597 | 1.5 |
| 42 | National University San Diego, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,645 | 25 † | $29,687 | $22,878 | 4.0 |
| 43 | American University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,630 | 40 | $26,000 | $41,943 | 8.6 |
| 44 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $59,555 | 276 | $13,500 | $12,548 | 2.2 |
| 45 | Marquette University Milwaukee, WI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,529 | 42 | $19,369 | $31,487 | 5.7 |
| 46 | Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,445 | 26 † | $24,750 | $31,446 | 5.6 |
| 47 | Brandeis University Waltham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,426 | 27 † | $23,250 | $35,736 | 7.8 |
| 48 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $59,342 | 141 | $14,282 | $16,109 | 2.9 |
| 49 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus Cincinnati, OH Public · 4-year | $59,290 | 25 † | $23,125 | $25,648 | 4.4 |
| 50 | Wabash College Crawfordsville, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,221 | 28 † | $27,000 | $24,336 | 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 History (CIP 5401, 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 286.
- 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 History 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 | $57,295 | 14 | Boston College |
| California | $55,939 | 28 | University of Southern California |
| Maryland | $55,895 | 6 | University of Maryland-College Park |
| Connecticut | $55,487 | 4 | Yale University |
| Nevada | $55,230 | 3 | Nevada State University |
| New York | $54,969 | 28 | Columbia University in the City of New York |
| Utah | $54,370 | 3 | Brigham Young University |
| Washington | $54,351 | 4 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus |
| New Jersey | $54,201 | 12 | Princeton University |
| Oregon | $54,131 | 3 | Oregon State University |
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