Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Linguistics (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Linguistics earn a median of $49,984 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $32,888 and $69,881. We rank the 52 U.S. colleges whose Linguistics programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,320 graduates in all. That puts Linguistics at #109 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
University of California-Berkeley, in California, leads at $76,724, 50% above the median ranked school ($51,171). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $44,415 and $57,110, and the lowest earns $31,036. 27 of the 52 ranked schools (52%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 19 public, 1 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 98% are public. California places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Virginia (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,303 a year, against $15,931 across all 52 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $18,879 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 3.1 years.
Showing the top 50 of 52 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $76,724 | 33 † | $14,000 | $13,481 | 1.4 |
| 2 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $68,263 | 76 | $22,500 | $24,953 | 3.2 |
| 3 | Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY Public · 4-year | $64,547 | 31 † | $18,938 | $18,784 | 2.6 |
| 4 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $62,927 | 144 | $15,000 | $12,548 | 1.9 |
| 5 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $62,366 | 56 | $18,879 | $23,322 | 3.6 |
| 6 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $61,580 | 74 | $13,000 | $16,109 | 2.6 |
| 7 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $61,080 | 43 | $18,500 | $20,268 | 3.1 |
| 8 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $60,883 | 47 | $22,345 | $24,406 | 4.1 |
| 9 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,469 | 49 | $11,742 | $15,564 | 2.8 |
| 10 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $60,031 | 55 | $19,000 | $17,303 | 2.7 |
| 11 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $59,742 | 45 | $21,696 | $19,857 | 3.2 |
| 12 | George Mason University Fairfax, VA Public · 4-year | $58,931 | 36 † | $19,500 | $17,915 | 3.2 |
| 13 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $58,443 | 47 | $13,798 | $14,741 | 2.7 |
| 14 | The University of Arizona Global Campus Chandler, AZ Public · 4-year | $56,666 | 28 † | $30,073 | — | — |
| 15 | Appalachian State University Boone, NC Public · 4-year | $55,778 | 29 † | $20,625 | $16,836 | 3.1 |
| 16 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $55,776 | 40 | $14,497 | $12,470 | 2.7 |
| 17 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $55,647 | 27 † | $15,479 | $21,279 | 5.7 |
| 18 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $55,540 | 25 † | — | $14,091 | 3.8 |
| 19 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $55,137 | 33 † | $13,720 | $13,138 | 2.6 |
| 20 | The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX Public · 4-year | $54,985 | 54 | $20,205 | $18,267 | 3.6 |
| 21 | Binghamton University Vestal, NY Public · 4-year | $54,215 | 26 † | $20,843 | $21,620 | 4.7 |
| 22 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $54,181 | 70 | $16,782 | $11,655 | 2.3 |
| 23 | Ramapo College of New Jersey Mahwah, NJ Public · 4-year | $53,085 | 43 | $22,925 | $18,173 | 4.5 |
| 24 | The University of Tennessee-Knoxville Knoxville, TN Public · 4-year | $52,703 | 52 | $20,612 | $18,976 | 4.2 |
| 25 | Clemson University Clemson, SC Public · 4-year | $52,044 | 29 † | $22,250 | $22,253 | 5.2 |
| 26 | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh, PA Public · 4-year | $51,416 | 27 † | $21,750 | $30,434 | 8.2 |
| 27 | Metropolitan State University of Denver Denver, CO Public · 4-year | $50,926 | 29 † | $24,867 | $15,327 | 6.0 |
| 28 | University of California-Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA Public · 4-year | $49,763 | 174 | $16,740 | $17,890 | 5.6 |
| 29 | California State University-San Bernardino San Bernardino, CA Public · 4-year | $49,732 | 25 † | — | $4,564 | 1.4 |
| 30 | Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania Bloomsburg, PA Public · 4-year | $48,495 | 34 † | $27,000 | $15,699 | 5.2 |
| 31 | West Virginia University Morgantown, WV Public · 4-year | $48,331 | 40 | $20,916 | $15,634 | 4.4 |
| 32 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $48,198 | 61 | $17,758 | $6,541 | 1.9 |
| 33 | University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $46,886 | 27 † | $20,680 | $22,182 | 9.0 |
| 34 | University of California-Riverside Riverside, CA Public · 4-year | $46,306 | 43 | $17,500 | $14,304 | 6.1 |
| 35 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $46,081 | 49 | $16,677 | $16,778 | 8.1 |
| 36 | Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA Public · 4-year | $45,607 | 29 † | $21,627 | $23,433 | 10.4 |
| 37 | University of Kentucky Lexington, KY Public · 4-year | $45,148 | 36 † | $26,000 | $18,851 | 7.8 |
| 38 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $44,941 | 34 † | $19,798 | $17,339 | 7.8 |
| 39 | Western Washington University Bellingham, WA Public · 4-year | $44,615 | 39 † | $19,798 | $21,193 | 21.2 |
| 40 | University of South Florida Tampa, FL Public · 4-year | $43,813 | 25 † | $14,250 | $9,812 | 4.1 |
| 41 | Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN Public · 4-year | $43,666 | 48 | $18,578 | $13,359 | 6.0 |
| 42 | San Diego State University San Diego, CA Public · 4-year | $42,922 | 28 † | $11,000 | $15,364 | 10.3 |
| 43 | Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Carbondale, IL Public · 4-year | $42,905 | 38 † | $23,625 | $13,297 | 7.8 |
| 44 | Montclair State University Montclair, NJ Public · 4-year | $42,017 | 32 † | $26,375 | $15,566 | 12.4 |
| 45 | Missouri State University-Springfield Springfield, MO Public · 4-year | $41,766 | 37 † | $20,250 | $17,613 | 10.1 |
| 46 | New Mexico State University-Main Campus Las Cruces, NM Public · 4-year | $40,432 | 41 | $19,125 | $8,889 | 4.3 |
| 47 | Georgia State University Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $40,310 | 43 | $21,588 | $15,931 | 9.8 |
| 48 | The University of Texas at El Paso El Paso, TX Public · 4-year | $39,907 | 26 † | $16,502 | $9,403 | 7.4 |
| 49 | University of Memphis Memphis, TN Public · 4-year | $39,001 | 52 | $21,279 | $12,397 | 11.8 |
| 50 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $38,996 | 58 | $11,543 | $10,440 | 20.7 |
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 Linguistics (CIP 1601, 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 52.
- 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 Linguistics 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia | $60,649 | 4 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| North Carolina | $55,778 | 3 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh |
| Texas | $54,985 | 3 | The University of Texas at Austin |
| New Jersey | $53,085 | 3 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| California | $49,763 | 11 | University of California-Berkeley |
| Tennessee | $43,666 | 3 | The University of Tennessee-Knoxville |
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