Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Human Development and Family Studies (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Human Development and Family Studies earn a median of $48,568 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $35,149 and $62,704. We rank the 119 U.S. colleges whose Human Development and Family Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 13,354 graduates in all. That puts Human Development and Family Studies at #115 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
Cornell University, in New York, leads at $73,066, 52% above the median ranked school ($48,043). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $45,367 and $52,633, and the lowest earns $28,906, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 58 of the 119 ranked schools (49%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 17 public, 3 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 82% are public. The top 20 are spread across 15 states, with New York the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $18,469 a year, against $16,739 across all 119 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,500 in federal loans, about 35% 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 3.3 years.
Showing the top 50 of 119 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $73,066 | 41 | $15,259 | $28,690 | 3.1 |
| 2 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $65,136 | 129 | $18,567 | $15,678 | 2.3 |
| 3 | Florida State University Tallahassee, FL Public · 4-year | $62,663 | 185 | $19,160 | $11,297 | 1.6 |
| 4 | Binghamton University Vestal, NY Public · 4-year | $62,506 | 127 | $16,650 | $21,620 | 3.2 |
| 5 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $61,262 | 61 | $19,000 | $12,470 | 2.1 |
| 6 | Warner Pacific University Portland, OR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,180 | 87 | $29,688 | $25,629 | 4.4 |
| 7 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $59,664 | 96 | $19,500 | $13,936 | 2.2 |
| 8 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $59,166 | 106 | $21,500 | $19,857 | 3.3 |
| 9 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $59,044 | 179 | $20,500 | $17,354 | 3.2 |
| 10 | Washington State University Pullman, WA Public · 4-year | $58,834 | 110 | $22,978 | $14,971 | 3.3 |
| 11 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $58,340 | 218 | $20,500 | $24,953 | 4.6 |
| 12 | California State University-East Bay Hayward, CA Public · 4-year | $57,898 | 165 | $17,516 | $9,320 | 1.8 |
| 13 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $57,888 | 215 | $21,500 | $25,097 | 5.0 |
| 14 | University of the District of Columbia Washington, DC Public · 4-year | $57,648 | 28 † | $51,085 | $10,648 | 2.4 |
| 15 | Concordia University-Saint Paul Saint Paul, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $55,294 | 54 | $20,375 | $18,462 | 4.2 |
| 16 | University of New Hampshire-Main Campus Durham, NH Public · 4-year | $55,186 | 120 | $27,000 | $23,805 | 7.2 |
| 17 | University of Houston Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $54,871 | 99 | $20,000 | $14,276 | 2.8 |
| 18 | Central Washington University Ellensburg, WA Public · 4-year | $54,858 | 30 † | $20,500 | $18,476 | 5.2 |
| 19 | SUNY Oneonta Oneonta, NY Public · 4-year | $53,836 | 53 | $21,300 | $19,158 | 4.2 |
| 20 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $53,740 | 171 | $28,195 | $19,680 | 4.2 |
| 21 | Merrimack College North Andover, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $53,734 | 118 | $26,000 | $37,927 | 12.0 |
| 22 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $53,597 | 238 | $20,425 | $21,279 | 6.6 |
| 23 | Montclair State University Montclair, NJ Public · 4-year | $53,575 | 128 | $25,000 | $15,566 | 3.8 |
| 24 | California State University-San Marcos San Marcos, CA Public · 4-year | $53,568 | 285 | $17,362 | $10,229 | 2.5 |
| 25 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $53,522 | 53 | $22,962 | $38,793 | 8.7 |
| 26 | Bowie State University Bowie, MD Public · 4-year | $53,181 | 48 | $20,500 | $19,298 | 4.9 |
| 27 | Oregon State University Corvallis, OR Public · 4-year | $53,109 | 304 | $23,028 | $19,604 | 4.9 |
| 28 | Illinois State University Normal, IL Public · 4-year | $52,748 | 67 | $20,500 | $19,398 | 4.7 |
| 29 | University of Vermont Burlington, VT Public · 4-year | $52,698 | 28 † | $19,250 | $19,343 | 5.0 |
| 30 | Sonoma State University Rohnert Park, CA Public · 4-year | $52,672 | 40 | $18,250 | $12,885 | 3.3 |
| 31 | State University of New York at Plattsburgh Plattsburgh, NY Public · 4-year | $52,593 | 50 | $22,750 | $17,156 | 4.1 |
| 32 | University of Nevada-Reno Reno, NV Public · 4-year | $52,084 | 151 | $21,250 | $15,927 | 4.2 |
| 33 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $51,921 | 247 | $21,250 | $19,070 | 4.5 |
| 34 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $51,857 | 117 | $19,500 | $16,674 | 4.3 |
| 35 | Fresno Pacific University Fresno, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,756 | 140 | $23,000 | $13,630 | 3.7 |
| 36 | Temple University Philadelphia, PA Public · 4-year | $51,610 | 57 | $25,904 | $28,198 | 7.5 |
| 37 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $51,497 | 95 | $15,523 | $6,541 | 1.5 |
| 38 | University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI Public · 4-year | $51,416 | 155 | $25,000 | $21,440 | 7.8 |
| 39 | California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA Public · 4-year | $51,261 | 823 | $12,500 | $6,555 | 1.8 |
| 40 | California State University-Monterey Bay Seaside, CA Public · 4-year | $51,118 | 32 † | $11,000 | $13,663 | 3.9 |
| 41 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $50,921 | 192 | $19,076 | $17,339 | 4.7 |
| 42 | California State University-Bakersfield Bakersfield, CA Public · 4-year | $50,850 | 119 | — | $5,652 | 1.6 |
| 43 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus Stillwater, OK Public · 4-year | $50,583 | 142 | $21,515 | $17,447 | 4.4 |
| 44 | Portland State University Portland, OR Public · 4-year | $50,427 | 70 | $20,750 | $9,552 | 2.8 |
| 45 | Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Baton Rouge, LA Public · 4-year | $50,422 | 32 † | $24,250 | $19,151 | 4.8 |
| 46 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $50,396 | 50 | $17,968 | $14,355 | 4.0 |
| 47 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $50,151 | 107 | $20,985 | $16,805 | 4.4 |
| 48 | University of Illinois Chicago Chicago, IL Public · 4-year | $50,123 | 49 | $16,200 | $10,974 | 3.1 |
| 49 | North Dakota State University-Main Campus Fargo, ND Public · 4-year | $50,052 | 173 | $22,775 | $15,543 | 4.8 |
| 50 | Stevenson University Owings Mills, MD Private nonprofit · 4-year | $49,902 | 35 † | $27,000 | $26,505 | 8.6 |
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 bachelor's degree programs in Human Development and Family Studies (CIP 1907, 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 119.
- 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 Human Development and Family 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Washington | $54,858 | 3 | Washington State University |
| New York | $53,836 | 5 | Cornell University |
| Maryland | $53,181 | 3 | University of Maryland-College Park |
| Oregon | $53,109 | 3 | Warner Pacific University |
| California | $50,984 | 14 | University of California-San Diego |
| Texas | $50,151 | 7 | The University of Texas at Austin |
| Illinois | $50,123 | 5 | Illinois State University |
| Wisconsin | $48,043 | 3 | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Oklahoma | $47,976 | 3 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus |
| Pennsylvania | $46,378 | 4 | Temple University |
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