Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Marketing (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Marketing earn a median of $69,303 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $49,728 and $93,152. We rank the 396 U.S. colleges whose Marketing programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 44,068 graduates in all. That puts Marketing at #41 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Brigham Young University, in Utah, leads at $112,596, 68% above the median ranked school ($66,916). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $60,924 and $73,931, and the lowest earns $37,424, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 156 of the 396 ranked schools (39%) match or beat the national median.
Private nonprofit colleges dominate the top 20: 15 private nonprofit, 5 public and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 58% are public. The top 20 are spread across 15 states, with Pennsylvania the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $36,623 a year, against $18,589 across all 396 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,563 in federal loans, about 20% 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 2.4 years.
Showing the top 50 of 396 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,596 | 76 | $11,000 | $15,564 | 0.8 |
| 2 | University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,211 | 36 † | $17,412 | $28,699 | 1.5 |
| 3 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $106,353 | 112 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 2.6 |
| 4 | Georgetown University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,944 | 53 | $17,000 | $40,815 | 2.5 |
| 5 | Santa Clara University Santa Clara, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $104,723 | 58 | $19,712 | $50,062 | 3.0 |
| 6 | Villanova University Villanova, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $102,222 | 90 | $26,747 | $43,756 | 2.7 |
| 7 | Washington University in St Louis St. Louis, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $100,489 | 29 † | $17,500 | $21,786 | 1.3 |
| 8 | Tulane University of Louisiana New Orleans, LA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,503 | 102 | $19,375 | $39,949 | 2.5 |
| 9 | Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,320 | 57 | $20,534 | $36,931 | 2.4 |
| 10 | Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $97,148 | 62 | $19,500 | $36,660 | 2.4 |
| 11 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $96,148 | 181 | $20,000 | $17,354 | 1.2 |
| 12 | George Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $95,528 | 57 | $22,975 | $36,586 | 2.6 |
| 13 | Elon University Elon, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $95,163 | 95 | $20,500 | $41,555 | 2.7 |
| 14 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $93,782 | 159 | $19,500 | $15,678 | 1.1 |
| 15 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $92,626 | 184 | $15,250 | $6,541 | 0.4 |
| 16 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $91,955 | 136 | $19,625 | $19,857 | 1.4 |
| 17 | University of San Francisco San Francisco, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $91,815 | 81 | $21,250 | $41,431 | 3.0 |
| 18 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $91,235 | 154 | $26,951 | $38,793 | 2.8 |
| 19 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $91,088 | 60 | $19,000 | $26,780 | 2.0 |
| 20 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $90,744 | 147 | $20,000 | $14,355 | 1.1 |
| 21 | Fordham University Bronx, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $90,733 | 70 | $26,933 | $44,338 | 3.2 |
| 22 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $90,453 | 216 | $22,250 | $19,680 | 1.4 |
| 23 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $89,944 | 157 | $19,500 | $23,322 | 1.7 |
| 24 | Providence College Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $89,629 | 175 | $27,000 | $48,523 | 3.9 |
| 25 | Drexel University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $89,486 | 185 | $25,229 | $38,509 | 2.9 |
| 26 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $89,208 | 81 | $21,500 | $25,097 | 1.9 |
| 27 | Bentley University Waltham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,461 | 145 | $26,000 | $37,930 | 3.2 |
| 28 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $88,383 | 343 | $24,499 | $17,799 | 1.4 |
| 29 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $88,114 | 170 | $15,000 | $14,091 | 1.2 |
| 30 | Utah State University Logan, UT Public · 4-year | $87,905 | 144 | $13,750 | $14,936 | 1.2 |
| 31 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $86,919 | 234 | $22,000 | $28,384 | 2.2 |
| 32 | Fairfield University Fairfield, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,740 | 139 | $27,000 | $48,095 | 3.9 |
| 33 | Loyola University Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,662 | 137 | $24,567 | $36,079 | 2.9 |
| 34 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $86,338 | 175 | $22,500 | $24,953 | 2.0 |
| 35 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA Public · 4-year | $86,299 | 119 | $21,796 | $22,383 | 2.0 |
| 36 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $86,246 | 224 | $22,136 | $16,778 | 1.4 |
| 37 | University of Miami Coral Gables, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,935 | 78 | $18,508 | $37,244 | 2.9 |
| 38 | Creighton University Omaha, NE Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,891 | 85 | $24,250 | $31,568 | 2.6 |
| 39 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $85,785 | 240 | $17,318 | $13,936 | 1.1 |
| 40 | The Catholic University of America Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,029 | 59 | $27,000 | $29,561 | 2.6 |
| 41 | Florida State University Tallahassee, FL Public · 4-year | $84,981 | 486 | $17,040 | $11,297 | 0.9 |
| 42 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $84,725 | 77 | $18,274 | $14,600 | 1.2 |
| 43 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $84,111 | 181 | $21,500 | $16,674 | 1.4 |
| 44 | University of Scranton Scranton, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,756 | 62 | $26,000 | $32,568 | 2.8 |
| 45 | University of San Diego San Diego, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,562 | 85 | $20,569 | $30,365 | 2.6 |
| 46 | University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT Public · 4-year | $83,511 | 100 | $20,765 | $16,200 | 1.4 |
| 47 | Quinnipiac University Hamden, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,258 | 69 | $24,250 | $40,675 | 3.6 |
| 48 | Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,825 | 165 | $24,906 | $48,381 | 4.2 |
| 49 | Marquette University Milwaukee, WI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,233 | 121 | $26,000 | $31,487 | 2.8 |
| 50 | Susquehanna University Selinsgrove, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,070 | 30 † | $27,000 | $28,819 | 2.5 |
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 Marketing (CIP 5214, 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 396.
- 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 Marketing 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| District of Columbia | $90,279 | 4 | Georgetown University |
| Utah | $82,547 | 6 | Brigham Young University |
| Massachusetts | $75,801 | 12 | Boston College |
| Connecticut | $74,201 | 7 | University of Connecticut |
| Nebraska | $74,165 | 3 | Creighton University |
| Minnesota | $74,079 | 11 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities |
| California | $73,290 | 13 | Santa Clara University |
| Rhode Island | $71,989 | 7 | Providence College |
| Arizona | $71,290 | 6 | University of Arizona |
| Washington | $70,921 | 6 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus |
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