Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Journalism (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Journalism earn a median of $56,278 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $40,588 and $73,923. We rank the 141 U.S. colleges whose Journalism programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 12,234 graduates in all. That puts Journalism at #80 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
George Washington University, in District of Columbia, leads at $81,927, 51% above the median ranked school ($54,425). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $49,932 and $60,974, and the lowest earns $39,178. 64 of the 141 ranked schools (45%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 9 public, 11 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 13 states, with California the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $26,785 a year, against $17,672 across all 141 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $21,500 in federal loans, about 31% 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 2.9 years.
Showing the top 50 of 141 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | George Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $81,927 | 47 | $25,000 | $36,586 | 3.5 |
| 2 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $80,258 | 132 | $14,834 | $29,167 | 2.6 |
| 3 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,776 | 57 | $15,000 | $32,740 | 3.1 |
| 4 | Chapman University Orange, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,135 | 28 † | $22,290 | $46,555 | 4.4 |
| 5 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $75,967 | 143 | $21,500 | $17,354 | 1.8 |
| 6 | Northeastern University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $74,709 | 37 † | $24,005 | $30,915 | 3.7 |
| 7 | Fordham University Bronx, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,475 | 28 † | $26,324 | $44,338 | 4.8 |
| 8 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $70,829 | 64 | $19,500 | $16,665 | 2.0 |
| 9 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $70,404 | 183 | $27,000 | $38,793 | 4.5 |
| 10 | Elon University Elon, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,964 | 35 † | $18,000 | $41,555 | 4.6 |
| 11 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $69,016 | 528 | $21,000 | $20,268 | 2.4 |
| 12 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $68,128 | 120 | $21,500 | $15,678 | 2.1 |
| 13 | Creighton University Omaha, NE Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,808 | 28 † | $27,000 | $31,568 | 4.1 |
| 14 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $67,539 | 63 | $21,000 | $14,355 | 1.8 |
| 15 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $66,799 | 356 | $19,500 | $16,778 | 2.3 |
| 16 | American University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,635 | 76 | $24,976 | $41,943 | 6.3 |
| 17 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $66,087 | 124 | $21,500 | $18,209 | 2.2 |
| 18 | Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $65,617 | 120 | $24,500 | $24,402 | 4.0 |
| 19 | Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY Public · 4-year | $65,535 | 41 | $23,375 | $18,784 | 2.5 |
| 20 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $64,224 | 257 | $18,340 | $14,967 | 2.2 |
| 21 | Baylor University Waco, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,622 | 78 | $23,525 | $41,104 | 5.7 |
| 22 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $63,358 | 76 | $18,618 | $14,480 | 2.2 |
| 23 | Emerson College Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,337 | 105 | $23,610 | $49,180 | 8.8 |
| 24 | Marquette University Milwaukee, WI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,322 | 29 † | $25,155 | $31,487 | 4.9 |
| 25 | Drake University Des Moines, IA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,969 | 39 † | — | $29,127 | 4.5 |
| 26 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $62,670 | 258 | $23,000 | $24,406 | 3.8 |
| 27 | University of Kansas Lawrence, KS Public · 4-year | $62,394 | 188 | $22,000 | $18,059 | 2.6 |
| 28 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $62,336 | 211 | $24,367 | $32,875 | 5.1 |
| 29 | Quinnipiac University Hamden, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,819 | 43 | $23,750 | $40,675 | 6.7 |
| 30 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $61,724 | 71 | $16,932 | $14,936 | 2.6 |
| 31 | DePaul University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,708 | 51 | $21,666 | $30,902 | 4.8 |
| 32 | Hampton University Hampton, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,675 | 119 | $26,000 | $25,319 | 4.0 |
| 33 | Hofstra University Hempstead, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,609 | 66 | $23,375 | $34,176 | 5.3 |
| 34 | Ithaca College Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,317 | 54 | $25,000 | $33,926 | 5.3 |
| 35 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $61,145 | 116 | $17,250 | $19,857 | 3.0 |
| 36 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $60,974 | 35 † | $27,000 | $28,384 | 4.6 |
| 37 | University of Central Florida Orlando, FL Public · 4-year | $60,887 | 32 † | $18,810 | $10,411 | 1.6 |
| 38 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $60,729 | 105 | $19,500 | $13,936 | 2.1 |
| 39 | CUNY Brooklyn College Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year | $60,272 | 36 † | — | $3,103 | 0.5 |
| 40 | Biola University La Mirada, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,925 | 32 † | $27,000 | $31,495 | 5.5 |
| 41 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $59,604 | 58 | $21,500 | $25,097 | 4.6 |
| 42 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $59,498 | 158 | $23,547 | $19,680 | 3.2 |
| 43 | University at Albany Albany, NY Public · 4-year | $59,495 | 73 | $22,467 | $17,167 | 2.9 |
| 44 | Ohio University-Main Campus Athens, OH Public · 4-year | $59,276 | 300 | $24,000 | $21,637 | 3.7 |
| 45 | Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, IN Public · 4-year | $59,151 | 171 | $18,762 | $16,264 | 2.9 |
| 46 | St. John's University-New York Queens, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,067 | 49 | $25,125 | $29,999 | 5.1 |
| 47 | St Bonaventure University Saint Bonaventure, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $58,816 | 28 † | $27,000 | $27,074 | 4.7 |
| 48 | Washington State University Pullman, WA Public · 4-year | $58,795 | 52 | $20,625 | $14,971 | 3.3 |
| 49 | West Virginia University Morgantown, WV Public · 4-year | $58,454 | 311 | $24,188 | $15,634 | 2.6 |
| 50 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $58,150 | 101 | $16,454 | $6,541 | 1.1 |
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 Journalism (CIP 0904, 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 141.
- 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 Journalism 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 | $63,337 | 5 | Northeastern University |
| Wisconsin | $63,322 | 3 | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| New York | $59,281 | 14 | Fordham University |
| California | $57,376 | 12 | University of Southern California |
| Iowa | $56,933 | 3 | Drake University |
| Arizona | $56,772 | 4 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion |
| Illinois | $56,524 | 8 | Northwestern University |
| Texas | $55,334 | 8 | Baylor University |
| Colorado | $55,304 | 4 | University of Northern Colorado |
| Florida | $54,491 | 4 | University of Central Florida |
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