Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for International Studies (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in International Studies earn a median of $59,972 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $40,760 and $82,911. We rank the 55 U.S. colleges whose International Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 3,795 graduates in all. That puts International Studies at #64 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Boston College, in Massachusetts, leads at $91,874, 55% above the median ranked school ($59,432). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $51,507 and $66,247, and the lowest earns $33,116. 24 of the 55 ranked schools (44%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 15 public, 4 private nonprofit and 1 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 82% are public. The top 20 are spread across 14 states, with California the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,321 a year, against $17,167 across all 55 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,250 in federal loans, about 28% 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 2.3 years.
Showing the top 50 of 55 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $91,874 | 50 | $19,000 | $41,704 | 3.3 |
| 2 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $86,599 | 210 | $22,282 | $9,597 | 0.7 |
| 3 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $82,501 | 26 † | $12,000 | $12,548 | 1.1 |
| 4 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $81,174 | 384 | $15,500 | $12,470 | 1.1 |
| 5 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $76,044 | 65 | $16,387 | $21,565 | 2.2 |
| 6 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $73,362 | 58 | $22,366 | $17,303 | 1.8 |
| 7 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $72,545 | 189 | $15,240 | $13,138 | 1.4 |
| 8 | The University of the South Sewanee, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,907 | 25 † | $19,500 | $27,872 | 3.1 |
| 9 | University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus Norman, OK Public · 4-year | $68,378 | 51 | $21,500 | $15,300 | 1.8 |
| 10 | University of Dayton Dayton, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $68,196 | 30 † | $24,125 | $29,533 | 3.7 |
| 11 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $67,396 | 36 † | $21,439 | $14,355 | 1.8 |
| 12 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $67,079 | 176 | $17,750 | $19,857 | 2.5 |
| 13 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $66,995 | 25 † | $19,000 | $17,339 | 2.2 |
| 14 | Brandeis University Waltham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,366 | 41 | $25,694 | $35,736 | 5.6 |
| 15 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $66,127 | 271 | $14,724 | $16,109 | 2.2 |
| 16 | University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT Public · 4-year | $65,703 | 53 | $24,305 | $16,200 | 2.4 |
| 17 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $64,372 | 67 | $26,000 | $19,680 | 2.7 |
| 18 | University at Albany Albany, NY Public · 4-year | $63,881 | 26 † | $23,750 | $17,167 | 2.4 |
| 19 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $63,504 | 171 | $17,250 | $21,315 | 3.0 |
| 20 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $63,452 | 83 | $17,732 | $17,354 | 2.7 |
| 21 | California State University-Monterey Bay Seaside, CA Public · 4-year | $61,480 | 29 † | $14,093 | $13,663 | 2.2 |
| 22 | University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus Denver, CO Public · 4-year | $61,344 | 38 † | $18,870 | $11,900 | 2.3 |
| 23 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $60,976 | 58 | $21,482 | $16,805 | 2.6 |
| 24 | College of Charleston Charleston, SC Public · 4-year | $60,468 | 37 † | $16,554 | $18,960 | 3.0 |
| 25 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $59,806 | 154 | $18,750 | $14,967 | 2.6 |
| 26 | University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO Public · 4-year | $59,796 | 87 | $17,340 | $25,346 | 5.3 |
| 27 | Centre College Danville, KY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,531 | 32 † | $27,000 | $20,781 | 3.4 |
| 28 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $59,432 | 71 | $11,625 | $6,541 | 1.0 |
| 29 | Hofstra University Hempstead, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,322 | 32 † | $25,000 | $34,176 | 5.8 |
| 30 | University of California-Riverside Riverside, CA Public · 4-year | $57,959 | 28 † | $20,500 | $14,304 | 2.7 |
| 31 | University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA Public · 4-year | $57,116 | 154 | $14,999 | $14,251 | 2.8 |
| 32 | Wright State University-Main Campus Dayton, OH Public · 4-year | $56,668 | 27 † | — | $15,415 | 3.0 |
| 33 | Spelman College Atlanta, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,538 | 29 † | $27,000 | $38,967 | 6.9 |
| 34 | Macalester College Saint Paul, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $56,091 | 35 † | $23,324 | $32,149 | 7.0 |
| 35 | University of North Carolina Wilmington Wilmington, NC Public · 4-year | $54,707 | 63 | $17,500 | $20,109 | 3.9 |
| 36 | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI Public · 4-year | $54,462 | 77 | $23,250 | $15,014 | 3.6 |
| 37 | University of North Florida Jacksonville, FL Public · 4-year | $54,321 | 41 | $18,480 | $10,154 | 2.0 |
| 38 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE Public · 4-year | $54,106 | 49 | $20,500 | $17,747 | 4.1 |
| 39 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $53,918 | 60 | $15,000 | $10,440 | 2.5 |
| 40 | University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $52,842 | 79 | $19,500 | $22,182 | 5.6 |
| 41 | Temple University Philadelphia, PA Public · 4-year | $51,931 | 33 † | $20,500 | $28,198 | 7.3 |
| 42 | University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC Public · 4-year | $51,082 | 58 | $23,250 | $15,435 | 3.6 |
| 43 | University of North Texas Denton, TX Public · 4-year | $50,139 | 66 | $19,000 | $15,649 | 4.1 |
| 44 | Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN Public · 4-year | $49,637 | 29 † | $18,904 | $13,359 | 3.6 |
| 45 | Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Baton Rouge, LA Public · 4-year | $49,540 | 43 | $21,500 | $19,151 | 5.0 |
| 46 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $49,475 | 28 † | $17,256 | $14,091 | 6.4 |
| 47 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $48,973 | 49 | $19,296 | $21,279 | 10.3 |
| 48 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $48,645 | 29 † | $25,000 | $16,674 | 5.5 |
| 49 | Saint Edward's University Austin, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,050 | 33 † | $23,250 | $25,578 | 7.7 |
| 50 | University of Kentucky Lexington, KY Public · 4-year | $47,698 | 41 | $24,550 | $18,851 | 6.1 |
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 International Studies (CIP 3020, 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 55.
- 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 International 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ohio | $66,995 | 3 | University of Dayton |
| California | $61,480 | 7 | University of California-Los Angeles |
| Texas | $60,976 | 5 | The University of Texas at Austin |
| Colorado | $59,796 | 3 | University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus |
| North Carolina | $54,707 | 3 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh |
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