Associate degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Paralegal and Legal Support (Associate)
Graduates who complete a associate degree in Paralegal and Legal Support earn a median of $44,669 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $29,687 and $60,138. We rank the 25 U.S. colleges whose Paralegal and Legal Support programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,230 graduates in all. That puts Paralegal and Legal Support at #15 of 27 associate degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Nassau Community College, in New York, leads at $64,127, 32% above the median ranked school ($48,423). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $43,452 and $52,554, and the lowest earns $37,417, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 17 of the 25 ranked schools (68%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 12 public, 5 private nonprofit and 3 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 12 states, with Illinois the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $11,974 a year, against $12,186 across all 25 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $17,022 in federal loans, about 34% 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 1.6 years.
Showing the top 25 of 25 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Nassau Community College Garden City, NY Public · 2-year | $64,127 | 33 † | — | $7,095 | 0.5 |
| 2 | Plaza College Forest Hills, NY For-profit · 4-year | $62,067 | 53 | $9,976 | $19,860 | 1.5 |
| 3 | Portland Community College Portland, OR Public · 2-year | $60,004 | 80 | $17,500 | $10,405 | 0.9 |
| 4 | Fremont University Cerritos, CA For-profit · 4-year | $57,539 | 38 † | $20,000 | $34,483 | 3.4 |
| 5 | Inver Hills Community College Inver Grove Heights, MN Public · 2-year | $55,256 | 30 † | $17,022 | $11,636 | 1.3 |
| 6 | City Colleges of Chicago-Wilbur Wright College Chicago, IL Public · 2-year | $52,837 | 27 † | — | $6,375 | 0.8 |
| 7 | North Hennepin Community College Brooklyn Park, MN Public · 2-year | $52,554 | 28 † | $12,849 | $12,186 | 1.7 |
| 8 | Liberty University Lynchburg, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,877 | 50 | $21,361 | $29,357 | 3.8 |
| 9 | Roger Williams University Bristol, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $51,534 | 27 † | — | $37,999 | 6.8 |
| 10 | Palm Beach State College Lake Worth, FL Public · 4-year | $51,314 | 33 † | — | $9,182 | 1.1 |
| 11 | Dallas College Dallas, TX Public · 4-year | $49,117 | 61 | $13,248 | $3,214 | 0.4 |
| 12 | CUNY LaGuardia Community College Long Island City, NY Public · 2-year | $48,948 | 39 † | — | $6,120 | 0.9 |
| 13 | Generations College Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 2-year | $48,423 | 35 † | $23,730 | $18,894 | 3.1 |
| 14 | Crestpoint University Phoenix, AZ For-profit · 4-year | $48,417 | 91 | $18,650 | $15,670 | 2.6 |
| 15 | Keiser University-Ft Lauderdale Fort Lauderdale, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $47,220 | 123 | $24,250 | $30,498 | 4.7 |
| 16 | Tarrant County College District Fort Worth, TX Public · 2-year | $46,074 | 29 † | — | $4,337 | 0.8 |
| 17 | Tidewater Community College Norfolk, VA Public · 2-year | $45,823 | 34 † | $13,307 | $11,762 | 2.6 |
| 18 | Harrisburg Area Community College Harrisburg, PA Public · 2-year | $43,996 | 33 † | $13,337 | $14,471 | 3.9 |
| 19 | Central Piedmont Community College Charlotte, NC Public · 2-year | $43,452 | 32 † | — | $3,345 | 0.7 |
| 20 | Roosevelt University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $41,138 | 28 † | $15,250 | $20,194 | 8.0 |
| 21 | Bryant & Stratton College-Buffalo Buffalo, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $40,003 | 161 | $21,089 | $14,135 | 6.6 |
| 22 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $39,259 | 39 † | $19,250 | $9,597 | 3.7 |
| 23 | West Virginia Junior College-Morgantown Morgantown, WV For-profit · 4-year | $38,815 | 26 † | $9,500 | $15,520 | 6.5 |
| 24 | Indian River State College Fort Pierce, FL Public · 4-year | $38,297 | 31 † | — | $3,815 | 1.9 |
| 25 | Miller-Motte College-Chattanooga Chattanooga, TN For-profit · 4-year | $37,417 | 69 | $25,555 | $23,958 | 18.4 |
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 associate degree programs in Paralegal and Legal Support (CIP 2203, 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 25.
- 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: 2 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 Paralegal and Legal Support 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 | $55,508 | 4 | Nassau Community College |
| Illinois | $48,423 | 3 | City Colleges of Chicago-Wilbur Wright College |
| Florida | $47,220 | 3 | Palm Beach State College |
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