Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Information Science (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Information Science earn a median of $85,294 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $59,774 and $116,854. We rank the 73 U.S. colleges whose Information Science programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 8,670 graduates in all. That puts Information Science at #21 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Northwestern University, in Illinois, leads at $163,740, 101% above the median ranked school ($81,420). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $72,049 and $91,671, and the lowest earns $50,009. 28 of the 73 ranked schools (38%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 14 public, 6 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 85% are public. The top 20 are spread across 14 states, with Maryland the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $21,671 a year, against $16,467 across all 73 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,500 in federal loans, about 19% 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 1.4 years.
Showing the top 50 of 73 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $163,740 | 39 † | $11,425 | $29,167 | 0.9 |
| 2 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $131,090 | 74 | $16,803 | $41,704 | 1.9 |
| 3 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $130,798 | 129 | $17,592 | $13,138 | 0.5 |
| 4 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $113,345 | 140 | $19,500 | $23,322 | 1.2 |
| 5 | Utah Valley University Orem, UT Public · 4-year | $112,128 | 50 | $17,125 | $6,376 | 0.3 |
| 6 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $109,092 | 284 | $19,500 | $15,678 | 0.9 |
| 7 | University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT Public · 4-year | $105,127 | 71 | $23,920 | $16,200 | 1.0 |
| 8 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $104,842 | 269 | $26,564 | $38,793 | 2.2 |
| 9 | New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, NJ Public · 4-year | $103,918 | 56 | $19,500 | $16,504 | 1.0 |
| 10 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $102,765 | 35 † | $23,869 | $21,279 | 1.4 |
| 11 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $100,940 | 75 | $13,197 | $11,655 | 0.7 |
| 12 | University of Maryland Global Campus Adelphi, MD Public · 4-year | $100,208 | 1,030 | $19,140 | $22,063 | 1.4 |
| 13 | Drexel University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,548 | 54 | $29,000 | $38,509 | 2.5 |
| 14 | Wentworth Institute of Technology Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,270 | 38 † | $26,417 | $34,170 | 2.4 |
| 15 | University of Maryland-Baltimore County Baltimore, MD Public · 4-year | $95,435 | 252 | $19,500 | $16,467 | 1.1 |
| 16 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus Cincinnati, OH Public · 4-year | $93,694 | 77 | $22,250 | $25,648 | 1.8 |
| 17 | College of Charleston Charleston, SC Public · 4-year | $93,285 | 30 † | $22,646 | $18,960 | 1.3 |
| 18 | Quinnipiac University Hamden, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $93,037 | 42 | — | $40,675 | 2.9 |
| 19 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $91,671 | 999 | $25,950 | $32,875 | 2.4 |
| 20 | Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY Public · 4-year | $89,875 | 75 | $19,750 | $18,784 | 1.4 |
| 21 | University of Massachusetts-Lowell Lowell, MA Public · 4-year | $89,715 | 228 | $21,990 | $17,163 | 1.4 |
| 22 | East Texas A&M University Commerce, TX Public · 4-year | $89,459 | 26 † | — | $11,841 | 0.9 |
| 23 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $88,289 | 100 | $13,500 | $14,936 | 1.2 |
| 24 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $87,757 | 479 | $23,500 | $24,406 | 1.9 |
| 25 | Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA Public · 4-year | $87,219 | 219 | $21,500 | $23,433 | 1.9 |
| 26 | Suffolk University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,406 | 36 † | $25,982 | $29,618 | 2.6 |
| 27 | Florida Institute of Technology Melbourne, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,906 | 72 | $48,000 | $35,639 | 2.8 |
| 28 | CUNY Bernard M Baruch College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $85,870 | 249 | $10,750 | $3,033 | 0.2 |
| 29 | Kennesaw State University Kennesaw, GA Public · 4-year | $84,364 | 101 | $23,877 | $15,048 | 1.2 |
| 30 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus Bowling Green, OH Public · 4-year | $84,273 | 26 † | $25,000 | $24,022 | 2.0 |
| 31 | Morgan State University Baltimore, MD Public · 4-year | $83,331 | 46 | $24,404 | $14,985 | 1.3 |
| 32 | Robert Morris University Moon Township, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,989 | 35 † | $27,000 | $23,003 | 2.0 |
| 33 | University of Nebraska at Omaha Omaha, NE Public · 4-year | $82,883 | 56 | $19,500 | $13,441 | 1.2 |
| 34 | DePaul University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,551 | 25 † | $24,000 | $30,902 | 2.7 |
| 35 | Missouri University of Science and Technology Rolla, MO Public · 4-year | $81,840 | 39 † | $23,578 | $16,298 | 1.4 |
| 36 | Metropolitan State University Saint Paul, MN Public · 4-year | $81,539 | 77 | $17,640 | $16,863 | 1.5 |
| 37 | Grand Valley State University Allendale, MI Public · 4-year | $81,420 | 47 | $28,937 | $16,317 | 1.4 |
| 38 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $81,289 | 123 | $24,912 | $19,070 | 1.6 |
| 39 | University of Illinois Chicago Chicago, IL Public · 4-year | $81,180 | 134 | $14,149 | $10,974 | 1.0 |
| 40 | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh, PA Public · 4-year | $81,117 | 131 | $26,486 | $30,434 | 2.7 |
| 41 | Salisbury University Salisbury, MD Public · 4-year | $81,116 | 76 | $23,000 | $17,743 | 1.6 |
| 42 | Georgia Southern University Statesboro, GA Public · 4-year | $80,409 | 190 | $26,000 | $15,267 | 1.3 |
| 43 | Stockton University Galloway, NJ Public · 4-year | $79,310 | 102 | $18,875 | $20,670 | 2.0 |
| 44 | The University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX Public · 4-year | $78,953 | 170 | $17,796 | $13,951 | 1.3 |
| 45 | Coastal Carolina University Conway, SC Public · 4-year | $77,999 | 29 † | $20,336 | $13,966 | 1.3 |
| 46 | University of North Georgia Dahlonega, GA Public · 4-year | $77,821 | 39 † | $17,500 | $9,823 | 0.9 |
| 47 | SUNY at Fredonia Fredonia, NY Public · 4-year | $77,409 | 30 † | — | $15,897 | 1.5 |
| 48 | California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA Public · 4-year | $76,482 | 151 | $13,071 | $6,555 | 0.7 |
| 49 | State University of New York at Oswego Oswego, NY Public · 4-year | $74,812 | 28 † | $25,496 | $16,236 | 1.7 |
| 50 | CUNY New York City College of Technology Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year | $74,456 | 266 | $11,750 | $5,127 | 0.5 |
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 Information Science (CIP 1104, 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 73.
- 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 Information Science 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utah | $105,127 | 3 | Utah Valley University |
| Massachusetts | $93,993 | 4 | Boston College |
| New Jersey | $87,757 | 3 | New Jersey Institute of Technology |
| Pennsylvania | $87,330 | 4 | Drexel University |
| Maryland | $83,331 | 7 | University of Maryland-College Park |
| Illinois | $82,551 | 3 | Northwestern University |
| Georgia | $79,115 | 4 | Kennesaw State University |
| Ohio | $79,103 | 4 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus |
| Texas | $78,953 | 5 | East Texas A&M University |
| New York | $74,456 | 11 | Syracuse University |
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