Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Liberal Arts and General Studies (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts and General Studies earn a median of $53,072 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $35,750 and $73,322. We rank the 344 U.S. colleges whose Liberal Arts and General Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 43,391 graduates in all. That puts Liberal Arts and General Studies at #94 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Massachusetts, leads at $147,998, 184% above the median ranked school ($52,093). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $47,002 and $58,237, and the lowest earns $30,778. 157 of the 344 ranked schools (46%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 6 public, 13 private nonprofit and 1 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 14 states, with Illinois the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $24,062 a year, against $16,114 across all 344 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $21,939 in federal loans, about 29% 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 344 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $147,998 | 270 | $11,935 | $20,111 | 0.8 |
| 2 | Yale University New Haven, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $113,788 | 71 | $15,750 | $23,777 | 1.3 |
| 3 | Bentley University Waltham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,183 | 144 | $26,000 | $37,930 | 2.4 |
| 4 | University of Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $96,510 | 64 | — | $14,860 | 1.0 |
| 5 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $93,180 | 54 | — | $29,167 | 2.0 |
| 6 | Champlain College Burlington, VT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $91,533 | 56 | $12,500 | $35,860 | 2.6 |
| 7 | DePaul University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,444 | 317 | $37,499 | $30,902 | 2.5 |
| 8 | Drexel University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $84,166 | 73 | $24,548 | $38,509 | 3.2 |
| 9 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $79,734 | 28 † | — | $9,597 | 0.8 |
| 10 | Life University Marietta, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $78,151 | 25 † | — | $29,791 | 2.7 |
| 11 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $74,122 | 737 | $21,500 | $24,406 | 2.6 |
| 12 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA Public · 4-year | $73,242 | 70 | $22,597 | $22,383 | 2.8 |
| 13 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $73,089 | 65 | $18,625 | $19,857 | 2.1 |
| 14 | William Jewell College Liberty, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,507 | 41 | $25,000 | $17,562 | 1.9 |
| 15 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $72,422 | 31 † | $13,000 | $11,655 | 1.2 |
| 16 | Saint Joseph's University - Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $72,048 | 39 † | $29,449 | $29,689 | 3.3 |
| 17 | Wesleyan University Middletown, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $71,932 | 500 | $15,500 | $30,177 | 3.5 |
| 18 | University of North Dakota Grand Forks, ND Public · 4-year | $71,538 | 131 | $22,378 | $18,551 | 2.1 |
| 19 | Molloy University Rockville Centre, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $71,097 | 25 † | $29,337 | $24,347 | 2.8 |
| 20 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $70,788 | 408 | $19,500 | $16,778 | 2.0 |
| 21 | Xavier University Cincinnati, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,546 | 93 | $23,250 | $32,997 | 3.9 |
| 22 | Saint Mary's College of California Moraga, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $68,501 | 61 | $27,000 | $30,378 | 3.9 |
| 23 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $68,171 | 82 | $17,500 | $16,665 | 2.1 |
| 24 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $67,859 | 47 | $18,765 | $13,138 | 1.6 |
| 25 | Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $67,522 | 232 | $23,250 | $31,446 | 4.1 |
| 26 | Regis College Weston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,664 | 59 | $27,000 | $27,477 | 4.3 |
| 27 | Southern New Hampshire University Manchester, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,656 | 833 | $13,023 | $36,708 | 5.9 |
| 28 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,502 | 375 | $21,069 | $37,050 | 4.8 |
| 29 | Wayne State University Detroit, MI Public · 4-year | $66,426 | 79 | $18,028 | $12,766 | 1.6 |
| 30 | Empire State University Saratoga Springs, NY Public · 4-year | $66,111 | 37 † | — | $11,676 | 1.5 |
| 31 | Dominican University of California San Rafael, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $65,780 | 25 † | — | $35,333 | 4.9 |
| 32 | Pace University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $65,637 | 26 † | $25,000 | $30,892 | 4.1 |
| 33 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $65,594 | 29 † | $19,028 | $17,303 | 2.2 |
| 34 | University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus Norman, OK Public · 4-year | $65,474 | 292 | $22,900 | $15,300 | 2.0 |
| 35 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $65,029 | 134 | $20,500 | $20,268 | 2.7 |
| 36 | University of Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $64,325 | 33 † | $26,846 | $21,602 | 3.1 |
| 37 | Seattle University Seattle, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $64,098 | 59 | $23,000 | $34,662 | 5.9 |
| 38 | Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,845 | 129 | $27,000 | $34,906 | 5.0 |
| 39 | Oakland University Rochester Hills, MI Public · 4-year | $63,534 | 156 | $23,780 | $9,120 | 1.3 |
| 40 | Moravian University Bethlehem, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,342 | 99 | — | $30,670 | 4.6 |
| 41 | The New School New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,976 | 87 | $24,343 | $58,741 | 8.6 |
| 42 | Quincy University Quincy, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,841 | 33 † | — | $20,359 | 3.0 |
| 43 | Trinity Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,755 | 52 | $30,500 | $9,302 | 1.6 |
| 44 | University of California-Riverside Riverside, CA Public · 4-year | $62,211 | 103 | $15,625 | $14,304 | 2.3 |
| 45 | California State University-Dominguez Hills Carson, CA Public · 4-year | $62,164 | 182 | $15,000 | $8,615 | 1.4 |
| 46 | Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,148 | 25 † | — | $48,381 | 7.7 |
| 47 | Providence College Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $62,111 | 25 † | — | $48,523 | 9.0 |
| 48 | CUNY Medgar Evers College Brooklyn, NY Public · 4-year | $61,987 | 41 | $11,899 | $5,718 | 0.9 |
| 49 | Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,359 | 208 | $18,650 | $39,343 | 6.1 |
| 50 | University of St Thomas (TX) Houston, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $61,219 | 49 | $23,326 | $19,359 | 2.9 |
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 Liberal Arts and General Studies (CIP 2401, 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 344.
- 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 Liberal Arts and General 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | $59,711 | 16 | Molloy University |
| California | $58,289 | 39 | Saint Mary's College of California |
| Connecticut | $56,700 | 7 | Yale University |
| Arizona | $56,433 | 3 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion |
| Utah | $56,183 | 4 | Weber State University |
| Oregon | $56,074 | 3 | Eastern Oregon University |
| Illinois | $55,757 | 14 | University of Chicago |
| New Jersey | $55,718 | 10 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| Washington | $55,403 | 5 | Seattle University |
| Pennsylvania | $54,958 | 11 | Drexel University |
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