Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Parks and Recreation Studies (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Parks and Recreation Studies earn a median of $50,983 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $37,138 and $67,192. We rank the 39 U.S. colleges whose Parks and Recreation Studies programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,557 graduates in all. That puts Parks and Recreation Studies at #101 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, in California, leads at $75,181, 41% above the median ranked school ($53,374). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $47,124 and $56,809, and the lowest earns $39,947, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 23 of the 39 ranked schools (59%) 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, 95% are public. California places 8 schools in the top 20, ahead of Minnesota (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $16,221 a year, against $16,200 across all 39 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,153 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 3.1 years.
Showing the top 39 of 39 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $75,181 | 54 | $15,400 | $16,665 | 1.7 |
| 2 | California State University-East Bay Hayward, CA Public · 4-year | $68,227 | 26 † | — | $9,320 | 1.2 |
| 3 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $63,080 | 79 | $12,250 | $15,564 | 2.5 |
| 4 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $61,313 | 81 | $22,564 | $14,355 | 2.3 |
| 5 | University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT Public · 4-year | $59,855 | 61 | $19,125 | $16,200 | 3.0 |
| 6 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $59,765 | 110 | $17,886 | $14,480 | 2.5 |
| 7 | California State University-Sacramento Sacramento, CA Public · 4-year | $59,041 | 108 | $19,181 | $9,338 | 1.7 |
| 8 | Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, IN Public · 4-year | $57,334 | 174 | $19,261 | $16,264 | 3.1 |
| 9 | University of Iowa Iowa City, IA Public · 4-year | $57,098 | 52 | $25,000 | $22,531 | 4.5 |
| 10 | San Diego State University San Diego, CA Public · 4-year | $57,093 | 50 | $14,999 | $15,364 | 3.1 |
| 11 | Kutztown University of Pennsylvania Kutztown, PA Public · 4-year | $56,525 | 101 | $26,875 | $21,331 | 4.3 |
| 12 | California State University-Fresno Fresno, CA Public · 4-year | $56,336 | 74 | $14,061 | $7,000 | 1.4 |
| 13 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $55,280 | 123 | $20,500 | $20,268 | 4.0 |
| 14 | San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year | $55,212 | 57 | $16,500 | $12,278 | 2.7 |
| 15 | University of Nebraska at Kearney Kearney, NE Public · 4-year | $54,563 | 80 | $21,000 | $16,242 | 3.7 |
| 16 | Winona State University Winona, MN Public · 4-year | $54,381 | 51 | $19,891 | $17,503 | 4.2 |
| 17 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $53,933 | 81 | $14,750 | $10,440 | 2.5 |
| 18 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $53,854 | 29 † | $14,050 | $16,778 | 4.2 |
| 19 | Bowling Green State University-Main Campus Bowling Green, OH Public · 4-year | $53,809 | 110 | $26,000 | $24,022 | 5.4 |
| 20 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $53,374 | 51 | — | $21,315 | 4.6 |
| 21 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $52,701 | 63 | $21,500 | $18,209 | 3.6 |
| 22 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $52,355 | 30 † | $20,745 | $14,967 | 3.8 |
| 23 | Shepherd University Shepherdstown, WV Public · 4-year | $51,789 | 55 | $22,625 | $11,363 | 2.6 |
| 24 | Western Washington University Bellingham, WA Public · 4-year | $50,832 | 58 | $17,395 | $21,193 | 8.3 |
| 25 | Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ Public · 4-year | $50,501 | 85 | $20,250 | $14,158 | 4.0 |
| 26 | Radford University Radford, VA Public · 4-year | $48,743 | 92 | $25,000 | $14,578 | 4.8 |
| 27 | University of Northern Iowa Cedar Falls, IA Public · 4-year | $48,506 | 81 | $20,000 | $15,901 | 5.6 |
| 28 | Western Colorado University Gunnison, CO Public · 4-year | $48,109 | 35 † | $14,753 | $16,425 | 8.8 |
| 29 | East Carolina University Greenville, NC Public · 4-year | $47,336 | 39 † | $15,667 | $15,739 | 4.7 |
| 30 | University of South Alabama Mobile, AL Public · 4-year | $46,912 | 61 | $26,500 | $17,648 | 4.8 |
| 31 | Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Carbondale, IL Public · 4-year | $45,623 | 45 | $20,000 | $13,297 | 5.6 |
| 32 | Grambling State University Grambling, LA Public · 4-year | $45,159 | 31 † | $34,750 | $19,809 | 7.3 |
| 33 | University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS Public · 4-year | $45,056 | 37 † | $27,518 | $21,708 | 6.1 |
| 34 | University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, NC Public · 4-year | $42,838 | 75 | $24,250 | $10,965 | 5.0 |
| 35 | Georgia Southern University Statesboro, GA Public · 4-year | $42,573 | 79 | $22,125 | $15,267 | 7.0 |
| 36 | Paul Smiths College of Arts and Science Paul Smiths, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $41,797 | 25 † | $20,500 | $26,683 | 17.6 |
| 37 | Missouri State University-Springfield Springfield, MO Public · 4-year | $41,550 | 42 | $21,250 | $17,613 | 10.5 |
| 38 | Northern Michigan University Marquette, MI Public · 4-year | $40,825 | 39 † | $20,000 | $14,085 | 9.4 |
| 39 | Central Michigan University Mount Pleasant, MI Public · 4-year | $39,947 | 33 † | — | $17,597 | 13.7 |
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 Parks and Recreation Studies (CIP 3101, 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 39.
- 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 Parks and Recreation Studies 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $58,067 | 8 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo |
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