Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Music (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Music earn a median of $42,892 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $26,048 and $58,755. We rank the 160 U.S. colleges whose Music programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 8,368 graduates in all. That puts Music at #126 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
University of Florida, in Florida, leads at $61,446, 40% above the median ranked school ($44,026). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $39,627 and $49,290, and the lowest earns $26,985. 93 of the 160 ranked schools (58%) 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, 68% are public. Texas places 9 schools in the top 20, ahead of New Jersey (2).
The top 20 schools cost less than most: a median net price of $14,963 a year, against $17,952 across all 160 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $24,625 in federal loans, about 43% 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 2.6 years.
Showing the top 50 of 160 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $61,446 | 28 † | — | $6,541 | 1.0 |
| 2 | Northeastern University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $60,974 | 42 | $25,500 | $30,915 | 6.2 |
| 3 | The University of Texas at El Paso El Paso, TX Public · 4-year | $60,172 | 36 † | $14,894 | $9,403 | 1.5 |
| 4 | The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Edinburg, TX Public · 4-year | $59,218 | 68 | $15,175 | $4,831 | 0.8 |
| 5 | Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $59,217 | 29 † | $21,500 | $15,846 | 2.6 |
| 6 | The University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX Public · 4-year | $59,198 | 53 | $22,714 | $13,951 | 2.3 |
| 7 | Sam Houston State University Huntsville, TX Public · 4-year | $58,743 | 65 | $25,630 | $16,404 | 2.7 |
| 8 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $58,127 | 60 | $18,007 | $11,655 | 1.9 |
| 9 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $58,071 | 32 † | $19,500 | $12,470 | 2.4 |
| 10 | Texas A&M University-Kingsville Kingsville, TX Public · 4-year | $57,117 | 26 † | $31,000 | $12,090 | 2.2 |
| 11 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $57,043 | 75 | $27,000 | $19,070 | 3.4 |
| 12 | University of Houston Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $56,667 | 59 | $25,000 | $14,276 | 2.6 |
| 13 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $56,104 | 32 † | $24,148 | $25,097 | 5.5 |
| 14 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $56,008 | 64 | $25,492 | $24,406 | 5.1 |
| 15 | University of North Texas Denton, TX Public · 4-year | $55,705 | 169 | $23,425 | $15,649 | 3.0 |
| 16 | Monmouth University West Long Branch, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $55,526 | 47 | $24,625 | $30,988 | 6.7 |
| 17 | East Texas A&M University Commerce, TX Public · 4-year | $55,438 | 37 † | $24,728 | $11,841 | 2.3 |
| 18 | University of Nevada-Las Vegas Las Vegas, NV Public · 4-year | $55,161 | 29 † | $30,500 | $10,359 | 2.3 |
| 19 | Illinois State University Normal, IL Public · 4-year | $54,767 | 32 † | $20,500 | $19,398 | 4.2 |
| 20 | Lebanon Valley College Annville, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $54,235 | 25 † | $26,846 | $26,979 | 6.1 |
| 21 | The University of Texas at San Antonio San Antonio, TX Public · 4-year | $53,878 | 62 | $23,703 | $10,836 | 2.3 |
| 22 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $53,875 | 58 | $18,039 | $29,167 | 6.6 |
| 23 | University of Massachusetts-Lowell Lowell, MA Public · 4-year | $53,384 | 102 | $27,000 | $17,163 | 5.6 |
| 24 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $52,841 | 74 | $25,000 | $37,050 | 8.7 |
| 25 | Stephen F Austin State University Nacogdoches, TX Public · 4-year | $52,341 | 89 | $26,000 | $14,260 | 3.3 |
| 26 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $52,320 | 86 | $23,250 | $16,805 | 3.8 |
| 27 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $52,132 | 69 | $26,750 | $19,680 | 4.5 |
| 28 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $51,882 | 59 | $20,968 | $23,322 | 6.1 |
| 29 | Ithaca College Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,338 | 57 | $27,000 | $33,926 | 8.7 |
| 30 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $51,310 | 28 † | $25,500 | $17,339 | 4.6 |
| 31 | Central Washington University Ellensburg, WA Public · 4-year | $51,008 | 30 † | $26,000 | $18,476 | 7.1 |
| 32 | Luther College Decorah, IA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,947 | 64 | $27,000 | $23,097 | 6.7 |
| 33 | Biola University La Mirada, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $50,781 | 37 † | $26,417 | $31,495 | 9.1 |
| 34 | Florida International University Miami, FL Public · 4-year | $50,677 | 41 | $12,722 | $9,288 | 2.3 |
| 35 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $50,544 | 45 | $24,148 | $14,355 | 4.0 |
| 36 | Montclair State University Montclair, NJ Public · 4-year | $50,418 | 76 | $27,000 | $15,566 | 4.6 |
| 37 | Wayne State University Detroit, MI Public · 4-year | $50,340 | 37 † | $22,452 | $12,766 | 3.3 |
| 38 | University of Iowa Iowa City, IA Public · 4-year | $50,180 | 28 † | $27,000 | $22,531 | 6.9 |
| 39 | Indiana State University Terre Haute, IN Public · 4-year | $49,711 | 35 † | $26,250 | $10,873 | 3.3 |
| 40 | Vermont State University Randolph, VT Public · 4-year | $49,438 | 33 † | — | $18,212 | 6.0 |
| 41 | University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT Public · 4-year | $49,240 | 36 † | $15,500 | $16,200 | 6.1 |
| 42 | Eastern Illinois University Charleston, IL Public · 4-year | $49,236 | 28 † | $26,000 | $12,786 | 3.9 |
| 43 | San Francisco Conservatory of Music San Francisco, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $49,186 | 28 † | $27,000 | $42,607 | 14.0 |
| 44 | Grand Valley State University Allendale, MI Public · 4-year | $49,111 | 49 | $29,075 | $16,317 | 4.6 |
| 45 | West Texas A & M University Canyon, TX Public · 4-year | $48,656 | 41 | $22,500 | $19,487 | 5.6 |
| 46 | Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA Public · 4-year | $48,630 | 41 | $27,000 | $16,804 | 5.5 |
| 47 | University of Silicon Valley San Jose, CA For-profit · 4-year | $48,360 | 25 † | — | $27,815 | 9.8 |
| 48 | West Virginia University Morgantown, WV Public · 4-year | $48,226 | 35 † | $23,975 | $15,634 | 4.4 |
| 49 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE Public · 4-year | $47,990 | 25 † | $23,250 | $17,747 | 6.4 |
| 50 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $47,831 | 71 | $21,050 | $10,440 | 3.8 |
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 Music (CIP 5009, 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 160.
- 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 Music 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | $55,705 | 15 | The University of Texas at El Paso |
| Michigan | $46,444 | 6 | Michigan State University |
| Massachusetts | $46,001 | 4 | Northeastern University |
| New Jersey | $45,481 | 8 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| Connecticut | $45,379 | 4 | University of Connecticut |
| Tennessee | $45,321 | 7 | Vanderbilt University |
| Utah | $44,898 | 3 | University of Utah |
| Virginia | $44,863 | 6 | James Madison University |
| Illinois | $44,756 | 9 | Illinois State University |
| Wisconsin | $44,346 | 4 | University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
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Film and Photography (Bachelor's)
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Visual and Performing Arts (General) (Bachelor's)
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$43,283 national median · 40 schools
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