Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Human Services (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Human Services earn a median of $39,422 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $24,115 and $52,609. We rank the 26 U.S. colleges whose Human Services programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,401 graduates in all. That puts Human Services at #22 of 27 associate degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
CUNY Bronx Community College, in New York, leads at $48,782, 18% above the median ranked school ($41,202). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $38,767 and $44,469, and the lowest earns $29,342, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 19 of the 26 ranked schools (73%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 15 public, 3 private nonprofit and 2 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 73% are public. New York places 11 schools in the top 20, ahead of Pennsylvania (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $9,470 a year, against $9,470 across all 26 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $13,743 in federal loans, about 32% 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 3.4 years.
Showing the top 26 of 26 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | CUNY Bronx Community College Bronx, NY Public · 2-year | $48,782 | 67 | $6,125 | $4,462 | 0.7 |
| 2 | Nassau Community College Garden City, NY Public · 2-year | $48,442 | 43 | $9,500 | $7,095 | 1.1 |
| 3 | Harcum College Bryn Mawr, PA Private nonprofit · 2-year | $48,185 | 107 | $20,511 | $24,776 | 4.2 |
| 4 | CUNY New York City College of Technology Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year | $47,942 | 29 † | — | $5,127 | 0.8 |
| 5 | Community College of Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA Public · 2-year | $47,362 | 37 † | $16,650 | $11,911 | 2.2 |
| 6 | Monroe University Bronx, NY For-profit · 4-year | $45,208 | 113 | $13,743 | $14,522 | 3.1 |
| 7 | San Diego City College San Diego, CA Public · 4-year | $44,787 | 30 † | — | $7,935 | 2.0 |
| 8 | Mount Wachusett Community College Gardner, MA Public · 2-year | $43,514 | 27 † | $4,500 | $7,931 | 6.4 |
| 9 | Delaware Technical Community College-Terry Dover, DE Public · 4-year | $43,316 | 140 | $7,250 | $11,578 | 3.4 |
| 10 | Monroe Community College Rochester, NY Public · 2-year | $43,110 | 80 | $14,920 | $6,353 | 1.7 |
| 11 | Harrisburg Area Community College Harrisburg, PA Public · 2-year | $42,048 | 36 † | $33,625 | $14,471 | 5.2 |
| 12 | Dutchess Community College Poughkeepsie, NY Public · 2-year | $41,788 | 61 | $12,000 | $10,065 | 3.3 |
| 13 | CUNY Stella and Charles Guttman Community College New York, NY Public · 2-year | $41,311 | 52 | — | $5,833 | 2.1 |
| 14 | Quinsigamond Community College Worcester, MA Public · 2-year | $41,092 | 65 | $20,000 | $9,090 | — |
| 15 | University of Phoenix-Arizona Phoenix, AZ For-profit · 4-year | $40,383 | 149 | $24,063 | $13,520 | 6.9 |
| 16 | Jamestown Community College Jamestown, NY Public · 2-year | $39,910 | 29 † | $9,050 | $9,850 | 4.7 |
| 17 | Bryant & Stratton College-Buffalo Buffalo, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $39,830 | 103 | $23,617 | $14,135 | 6.9 |
| 18 | Columbia College (MO) Columbia, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $39,817 | 118 | $28,454 | $22,715 | 9.1 |
| 19 | Mohawk Valley Community College Utica, NY Public · 2-year | $39,729 | 49 | $10,875 | $8,987 | 4.5 |
| 20 | Hudson Valley Community College Troy, NY Public · 2-year | $38,446 | 47 | $10,946 | $8,501 | 6.3 |
| 21 | Onondaga Community College Syracuse, NY Public · 2-year | $38,232 | 39 † | $12,019 | $8,562 | 6.9 |
| 22 | York County Community College Wells, ME Public · 2-year | $37,561 | 32 † | — | $5,875 | — |
| 23 | Lake Area Technical College Watertown, SD Public · 2-year | $37,135 | 47 | $11,273 | $15,979 | — |
| 24 | Ohio Christian University Circleville, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $35,767 | 82 | $24,750 | $20,607 | — |
| 25 | Saint Louis Community College Bridgeton, MO Public · 4-year | $33,339 | 43 | $11,584 | $8,440 | — |
| 26 | Ultimate Medical Academy Clearwater, FL Private nonprofit · 2-year | $29,342 | 776 | $17,978 | $20,457 | — |
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 Human Services (CIP 4400, 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 26.
- 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 Human Services 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | $47,362 | 3 | Harcum College |
| New York | $41,550 | 12 | CUNY Bronx Community College |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
-
Human Services (Bachelor's)
Same major, Bachelor's level
$48,597 national median · 64 schools
-
Psychology (Associate)
$39,288 national median · 52 schools
-
Culinary Arts (Associate)
$39,605 national median · 44 schools
-
Design and Applied Arts (Associate)
$38,127 national median · 40 schools
-
Teacher Education (Levels and Methods) (Associate)
$37,656 national median · 66 schools
-
Veterinary Technology (Associate)
$41,460 national median · 43 schools
-
Health Administration (Associate)
$37,073 national median · 77 schools
-
Medical Assisting (Associate)
$42,269 national median · 187 schools
All majors College rankings How to read Scorecard earnings data Community college vs. four-year college