Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Mental and Social Health Services (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Mental and Social Health Services earn a median of $52,119 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $38,401 and $68,626. We rank the 35 U.S. colleges whose Mental and Social Health Services programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,936 graduates in all. That puts Mental and Social Health Services at #96 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
University of Pennsylvania, in Pennsylvania, leads at $76,395, 48% above the median ranked school ($51,502). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $48,866 and $57,484, and the lowest earns $40,901, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 17 of the 35 ranked schools (49%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 16 public, 4 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 77% are public. The top 20 are spread across 16 states, with Arizona the most common (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $18,402 a year, against $17,601 across all 35 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $25,000 in federal loans, about 44% 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 3.4 years.
Showing the top 35 of 35 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,395 | 42 | $12,634 | $28,699 | 2.9 |
| 2 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $67,033 | 379 | $20,500 | $23,322 | 3.1 |
| 3 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $66,865 | 95 | $17,731 | $21,315 | 2.7 |
| 4 | Worcester State University Worcester, MA Public · 4-year | $63,505 | 84 | $21,000 | $13,381 | 2.4 |
| 5 | Western Connecticut State University Danbury, CT Public · 4-year | $63,218 | 55 | $27,239 | $17,604 | 2.8 |
| 6 | Metropolitan State University Saint Paul, MN Public · 4-year | $60,780 | 60 | $21,335 | $16,863 | 2.9 |
| 7 | Davenport University Grand Rapids, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $58,907 | 28 † | $25,000 | $17,707 | 2.9 |
| 8 | Ohio University-Main Campus Athens, OH Public · 4-year | $57,998 | 37 † | $26,000 | $21,637 | 3.9 |
| 9 | Southern New Hampshire University Manchester, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $57,701 | 35 † | $21,584 | $36,708 | 9.3 |
| 10 | Minnesota State University-Mankato Mankato, MN Public · 4-year | $57,266 | 82 | $25,736 | $19,139 | 3.9 |
| 11 | University of Kansas Lawrence, KS Public · 4-year | $57,252 | 28 † | $22,784 | $18,059 | 3.2 |
| 12 | Northern Illinois University Dekalb, IL Public · 4-year | $55,586 | 126 | $27,787 | $13,391 | 2.7 |
| 13 | Central Michigan University Mount Pleasant, MI Public · 4-year | $53,353 | 41 | $28,125 | $17,597 | 3.8 |
| 14 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus Cincinnati, OH Public · 4-year | $52,735 | 25 † | $35,000 | $25,648 | 6.2 |
| 15 | New Mexico Highlands University Las Vegas, NM Public · 4-year | $52,517 | 144 | $13,000 | $14,838 | 2.9 |
| 16 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $52,243 | 112 | $21,750 | $16,674 | 4.2 |
| 17 | University of South Dakota Vermillion, SD Public · 4-year | $52,211 | 62 | $25,850 | $19,858 | 5.2 |
| 18 | William Paterson University of New Jersey Wayne, NJ Public · 4-year | $51,502 | 66 | $25,000 | $18,745 | 5.2 |
| 19 | Grand Canyon University Phoenix, AZ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,490 | 187 | $31,432 | $22,472 | 6.0 |
| 20 | Rhode Island College Providence, RI Public · 4-year | $51,379 | 44 | $26,463 | $9,478 | 3.5 |
| 21 | Indiana State University Terre Haute, IN Public · 4-year | $51,288 | 93 | $25,000 | $10,873 | 2.9 |
| 22 | California State University-Fresno Fresno, CA Public · 4-year | $51,047 | 91 | $14,833 | $7,000 | 2.0 |
| 23 | Eastern New Mexico University-Main Campus Portales, NM Public · 4-year | $50,598 | 43 | $18,191 | $4,904 | 1.1 |
| 24 | Columbia Southern University Orange Beach, AL For-profit · 4-year | $49,618 | 61 | $25,000 | $14,580 | 3.3 |
| 25 | University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR Public · 4-year | $49,129 | 94 | $25,000 | $16,511 | 4.0 |
| 26 | The University of Arizona Global Campus Chandler, AZ Public · 4-year | $48,922 | 112 | $33,129 | — | — |
| 27 | Alvernia University Reading, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,809 | 47 | $32,167 | $28,138 | 9.1 |
| 28 | University of Maine at Augusta Augusta, ME Public · 4-year | $48,604 | 116 | $27,704 | $10,924 | 4.1 |
| 29 | Washburn University Topeka, KS Public · 4-year | $48,327 | 31 † | $30,974 | $15,280 | 4.5 |
| 30 | Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA Public · 4-year | $47,604 | 276 | $25,000 | $14,638 | 5.3 |
| 31 | Indiana Wesleyan University-Marion Marion, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $45,729 | 46 | $25,370 | $22,866 | 9.9 |
| 32 | Pennsylvania Western University California, PA Public · 4-year | $42,837 | 52 | — | $18,256 | 11.5 |
| 33 | University of Maine at Farmington Farmington, ME Public · 4-year | $42,513 | 30 † | $27,000 | $16,857 | 14.9 |
| 34 | Purdue University Fort Wayne Fort Wayne, IN Public · 4-year | $42,133 | 70 | $22,303 | $13,171 | 9.3 |
| 35 | Ohio Christian University Circleville, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $40,901 | 42 | — | $20,607 | 17.1 |
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 Mental and Social Health Services (CIP 5115, 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 35.
- 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 Mental and Social Health Services 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 | $52,735 | 3 | Ohio University-Main Campus |
| Arizona | $51,490 | 3 | University of Arizona |
| Pennsylvania | $48,809 | 3 | University of Pennsylvania |
| Indiana | $45,729 | 3 | Indiana State University |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
-
Nursing (Bachelor's)
$88,910 national median · 736 schools
-
Communication Disorders (Bachelor's)
$58,928 national median · 169 schools
-
Health Administration (Bachelor's)
$58,716 national median · 161 schools
-
Public Health (Bachelor's)
$58,808 national median · 148 schools
-
Diagnostic and Treatment Health Professions (Bachelor's)
$70,786 national median · 140 schools
-
Health Sciences (General) (Bachelor's)
$61,296 national median · 121 schools
-
Rehabilitation and Therapeutic Professions (Bachelor's)
$55,792 national median · 58 schools
-
Clinical Laboratory Science (Bachelor's)
$75,975 national median · 51 schools
All majors College rankings How to read Scorecard earnings data Community college vs. four-year college